Conditions are ideal today for our favorite ride in Borrego Springs - the out and back along Route S22, the road east to the Salton Sea. It’s already comfortably warm when we bike east from the village not long after 9:30, getting an early start to get our miles in before the day warms up.
I’ve lost track now of how many times we’ve taken this ride, but it’s at least three - not counting the time that we continued eastward and north to Indio as part of a two week tour starting from San Diego. We rode it just eleven months ago in fact, on a stopover between Tucson and Saint George when we were working our way north last winter. This pattern is starting to feel like a routine with us.
You would think that since we rode this ride so recently it would be clear in our mind; and it is, really. We know the lay of the land, the way it gradually climbs over the southernmost shoulder of the Santa Rosa Mountains before beginning the slow drop to the Salton Sea. We remember crossing the broad canyons on this side of the divide, and the grotesquely eroded badlands on the other.
But it’s a mental/clinical memory, not a visceral one apparently; because as soon as we start biking we’re stunned anew by the drama and beauty of this fantastic, spacious landscape. You wouldn’t think we would find ourselves in awe again so soon after just seeing it, but here we are. I expect it will be the same the next time we’re here as well. There are worse routines to settle into.
Eastbound on Palm Canyon Drive, looking back at San Ysidro Mountain.
Making the turn north on Papago Road, I get a last vision of Rocky up the road ahead of me. I got behind stopping to document the weather report, and now she’s gone and dropped me. I won’t see her again for another twenty miles.
The next ten miles are all downhill as the road drops to Highway 86 just shy of the Salton Sea. At the junction if we continued that far we’d be at 80 feet below sea level.
At the county line. The road continues like this all the way to the Salton Sea. Well, actually that’s not true. It gets worse as you go along. This is the good part.
Good! We’re about two miles past our planned turn back point and I was starting to get concerned. The scenery is so astonishing that it just keeps drawing you in to go around one more bend.
