The last 3 days… 3

It’s time to pack up the bikes and fly back to cold winters Europe. But, before we head home we went for a last blast in the SoCal desert.

We had to look at storage units and since we were on the road we made a trip out of it, any excuse for a ride! We took the fastest possible way to El Centro following Highway 8 then headed north to Slab City, an alternative community made famous by the movie “Into The Wild” where we spent the night.

On the way just outside Slab City we stopped at “Salvation Mountain” to walk around this interesting work of art (I guess that’s what this is) and pulled into ‘East Jesus’ just in time to have a glimpse of the place before it got dark.

We pitched our tent on the outskirts of the makeshift community near a Military gun range. There was a lot of shooting going on with the occasional explosion, helicopters overhead… Not as quiet as we would have liked but eventually they stopped and the choppers flew home.

In the morning we headed back to East Jesus to have a proper look at the “museum” and rode through slab city to see more of this interesting place.

From here we followed the Coachella Canal dirt road to the north until we reached the junction with the Bradshaw trail. Our options were return to paved road and make a detour to Corn Springs or take the 25 mile 4×4 road through the wilderness / desert. We chose the dirt road. The road started off as coarse gravel with deep washboarding until we reached the train tracks. Passed the tracks we descended into the river bed and that’s when the fun began. Initially it was fairly compact sand with pockets of deeper loose sand but gradually it all became deep sand making it very challenging for the heavy loaded bikes to get though. It took over an hour to complete a 5km section, each dropping our bikes several times and struggling with traction as we were digging holes trying to get places.

I was ready to throw in the towel and call it a day when things suddenly got better. The trail came out of the river bed and up a little on a harder surface and suddenly we were making progress again. The last 15 kms took about 40′ and we got out of the dirt and back on the pavement by sunset.

The sealed road was a welcome sight, we were both tired, dusty and very sweaty. Unfortunately it was another 40 kms to the campgrounds, 12 of those on dirt road. At least we knew this road and it was fairly decent with only a few lose sand patches.

I dropped my bike one last time on the way up to the campsite, a combination of being tired and hurrying to get there, it was a good one with a bit of speed behind it! Anyway, we picked the bike up (again) and carried on. The campsite was empty and we heated some water, got our portable shower out and had a great outdoor shower followed by dinner and you would have guessed it, bed!

On the last day we went for a walk around the area looking for Indian petroglyphs which we eventually found right next to the campsite entrance. We also saw a bunch of different animal tracks, not surprising since there is a water source nearby. We left Corn Springs around 11 and started the long journey back to Solana Beach (about 320 kms) starting off with some dirt then 40mins on the highway, half an hour in traffic in palm desert then 45mins of nice uphill curvy roads to our lunch stop.

After lunch we carried on through the hills of San Diego through Warner Springs, San Ysabel, Ramona, Poway and then onto Solana Beach using the back roads. We got home around 17:00, tired, dusty and hungry!

It was another fun and challenging 3 days having ridden about 650 kms and I dropped my bike more in one day than I had in the whole 7.5 months on the road!

All that is left to do now is prep the bikes for storage, clean all our gear and pack everything up… A few busy days ahead.

TA