Someone told Charmaine that his favorite ride around here was up through Rancho Santa Fe and past Lake Hodges. That’s not too far from where we live, so we decided to try it today. The ride up was amazing. I’ll definitely be doing it again, probably during my lunch break one of these days. There was a decent amount of climbing, but it was never too crazy.

When we got to the top, we weren’t sure if we would be able to go south and connect to any roads we know, or if we would have to ride along a section of I-15 on our bikes (not a fun sounding option), or just go back down the way we came. I had spent a long time looking at maps trying to find a way south, but it seemed the only road that went from Escondido to Rancho Bernardo (without a 20+ mile detour) was the freeway, so I was voting for going back the way we came.

Luckily, we caught up to a group that knew a lot more about the area than we did. They knew about a pedestrian underpass across the freeway and a pedestrian bridge that crossed the bottom of Lake Hodges. It was great. We connected up through Rancho Bernardo and made our way back along Carmel Valley Road and Del Mar Heights Road. That makes the loop very doable.

Unfortunately, I thought we would only be outside about 2 hours, so I wasn’t wearing sunblock and I got sunburned. Hopefully I have learned my lesson, but somehow I doubt it.