May 30, Day one of ride

Well we are finally on our way.  Left Point Loma on the west side of San Diego about 7 AM.  Rode north west to catch the San Diego River bikeway and met a fellow on his bike who got us onto Friar’s Rd.  Total ride today was only about 41 miles and we got to Alpine just after noon.  We had climbed just over 2000 vertical feet, most of it in the last 12 miles from Lakeside.  The problem is we were doing the climbing in the heat of the day and we really over did with our walk yesterday so true to our plans, we stopped for lunch, looked around and found this was a nice town with a very nice motel (Ayers Inn) so rather than push on for another 25 miles to get to Julian and have to climb another 1500 to 2000 feet today we decided to take advantage of the surroundings and take a rest.  No point in overdoing it on the first day of a long ride. 

 

The ride today was fun but a bit hectic as we were in the city for much of it and even though we were on bike trails and bike routes, there was a fair amount of traffic.  One great diversion was the Junipiero Serra Bike path through Mission  Trails Regional Park.  This was about 5 miles of bike/running path that avoided a big hill and brought us into Santee. 

 

No trouble following the route so far. 

 

Hope you got to see the photo earlier today as we left the Motel at Liberty Station on Point Loma. 

 

Tomorrow will feature more climbing and the one time we are going off the Adventure Cycling routes.  Right now we are still on their Southern Tier route and will be for about another 12 miles but then we are going to turn onto Rt 79 and head north rather than going all the way to Pine Valley to join the Sierra Cascades Route south of Julian.  This should save us about 7-8 miles but may be an even bigger climb than their route over Mt Laguna.  We also have a short stretch where our designated route is on Interstate 8 (about 5-6 miles) before we turn onto Rt 79. 

 

Weather is beautiful but for us it is hot and dry, something we have not seen so far this year.

 

Total distance to date:  41 miles