Wrapping Up Our Tour de California

Hellacious headwinds. Hills. Google Maps hiccups. Heck yeah.

That sums up our last days of riding in the Golden State.

Leaving the LA area, we had the good fortune to ride a lot of car-free pathways that followed “rivers” and “creeks” like this:

We are firm believers in finding beauty in our natural surroundings. Even in the nonstop asphalt and concrete of this area.

But it was a challenge.

The Santa Ana River Trail helped us move eastward through hills towns. We passed through Yorba Linda, Coronita, and the horse town of Norco. (Seriously, Norco has paths throughout the neighborhoods dedicated to riding your horse.) The bike trail worked for us and guided us into Riverside where we stayed for the evening.

From Riverside, we hopped back on the Santa Ana River Trail. We thought it was going to be an easy day up to Beaumont. It was anything but. We had crazy headwinds all day, some whacknugget directions on roads that weren’t roads (thanks, Googs), and a good climb up San Timoteo Canyon.

The wind was impressively relentless. And the next day riding toward Palm Springs, we had more headwind, like this:

To get us started, Googs thought it would be fun to send us through the Soverign Nation of the Morongo in Banning. When we got to the gate, the guard kindly told us we were not allowed on tribal lands. So he sent us down the street with a smile to a road that doesn’t exist.

After an hour and a half of backtracking and making friends with the kind people at visitor center, we discovered that a bicycle-friendly route through this section doesn’t exist.

Banning had trapped us in its vortex. Almost.

At this point, Cortney and I decided to blaze our own trail. We cruised through homeless encampments, along non-roads that paralleled railroad tracks. We pedaled across barren aqueducts. We rode sandy trails with giant baby heads. And a scraggly coyote even followed us for a while.

We were happy to roll into Palm Springs.

In Palm Springs, we rested for a couple days, tackled some freelance, and got out to explore a bit. We even visited the art museum. Ironically, Cortney had a spoke break on her, so we learned all about spokes and truing wheels. (You don’t know until you know.) We’re just grateful it happened close to Palm Springs Bikes and not in a remote section of the desert. (Thanks, Dylan!)

After we left Coachella Valley, we made a quick stop at the southern part of Joshua Tree National Park. It was beautiful.

Cortney and I realize we are going to be getting more than enough of our share of desert beauty in the coming months. (Hopefully we’ll get our fair share of great Mexican food too.)

-Erik