December 10, 2021
Lopez Canyon
Today looks like an outstanding day to ride - sunny, reasonably calm, and nearly fifteen degrees warmer than yesterday. This is the sort of weather we’ve driven so far south hoping to find!
It’s still on the edge when we start out at about ten, planning to ride a loop to Lopez Lake and then south through the outskirts of Arroyo Grande - a near repeat of this ride we took almost exactly a year ago. Revisiting that ride now, I see that we were here partly to stop in at the REI in San Luis Obispo, a detail we both completely forgot about but will be reminded of when we stop in again tonight after dinner to purchase a new set of cycling gloves for Rachael to replace the ones that presumably were dropped in the shopping mall parking lot up in Paso Robles when we loaded up the Raven for the drive back from yesterday’s ride up Hog Canyon.
We haven’t actually ridden through downtown SLO before this morning though, and we’re suitably impressed by how bike friendly it is as we follow well marked, generous bikeways from the door of our motel all the way to the Amtrak station where we cross the tracks and pick up the excellent Railroad Bicycle Trail east to the outskirts of town. It’s only been a year, but we’d only dimly remembered what a fine path this is. It’s short, but a joy to experience again.
On the outskirts of town we pick up Orcutt Road and follow it east for about ten miles, until the turnoff to Lopez Lake. This is another road we’ve ridden before - twice before actually - but are surprised anew by what a fine ride it gives as it rolls over a series of low ridges through scenic wine country. Traffic is light, it’s well surfaced and has a good shoulder most of the way, and it obviously sees a great deal of bike traffic.
Turning off onto Lopez Drive we climb about five hundred feet in the next two miles following Arroyo Grande Creek upstream, with most of the climb coming at once as we circle up to the top of the dam that impounds Lopez Lake. From there we skirt the eastern shore of the reservoir until we come to the bridge crossing Phoenix Creek, the primary source for the lake.
The bridge crosses the creek quite a ways above the upper rim of the lake, but both the map and the satellite view show the lake as extending upstream beyond the bridge. It’s apparent that the reservoir’s surface elevation is quite a bit lower than it has been in the past. This was the case last winter also, when we looked down from this bridge and watched a park ranger throwing stones at a pair of peccaries to drive them further from the park.
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https://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?query_src=photos_index&rel-taxon=begins+with&where-taxon=Dudleya+palmeri
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Our ride plan was to turn back here, return to Orcutt Road and then continue southeast to the outskirts of Arroyo Grande before turning back west through Corbett Canyon. Instead though we decide to continue up along Phoenix Creek on High Mountain Road, seeing a sign that states that the pavement ends in six miles. From this end it looks like a fine cycling road, and with this extra distance we’ll just skip the Arroyo Grande loop and turn the ride into a pure out and back. Rachael is quite pleased at this, and in fact had reminded me early in the ride that out and backs are her favorite and wanted to know why I wasn’t including more of them on this trip. Pretty impatient I think, since this is only our second outing.
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This proves to be an excellent idea. High Mountain Road is a beaut, nearly as attractive as yesterday’s ride into Hog Canyon was. Staying in San Luis Obispo has turned out to have been a fine choice for a short layover.
I stop for a few photos while Rachael takes advantage of the out and back by biking on ahead. She turns back just before pavements end, and soon after we meet up again we find a wall by the side of the road to lean against while we sit in the warm sun, enjoy the views, and eat lunch. She asks me if I saw the deer, which I didn’t; but I did get to pet a horse which was really just as cool.
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After lunch we head back toward San Luis Obispo. The first eight miles are fast and nearly all downhill as we drop back to the lake and the Orcutt Road. At the lake when something catches my eye - a pelican, as it turns out - so I stop and Rachael continues, shouting out that she’ll see me when I get back to the room.
Over the next few miles I find several more reasons to stop, so I get further and further behind. From the Garmin I see that she’s nearly a half mile ahead when I get back on Orcutt and start riding nonstop again. She’s keeping a fast pace I see, but I keep a better one and eventually she comes into view again. I’m only about a hundred yards behind her - in earshot, really - when something else causes me to stop again and she pulls away once more.
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For dinner we head over to Giuseppi’s, a nice Italian place that we would likely have enjoyed more if there hadn’t been an hour-long wait for indoor seating. It’s not too bad outdoors and there are space heaters, so we take a chance on it; but the wind definitely has a bite to it and drives Rachael indoors between her soup and main course, pretending she has to go to the bathroom so she can get warmed up.
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Love how the heat lamp matches Rachael's jacket!
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Ride stats today: 46 miles, 2,500’
Today's ride: 46 miles (74 km)
Total: 447 miles (719 km)
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