(Editors Note: We are home and finalizing the Blog) Saturday had multiple possibilities, but the one we settled on was to head up and check out Solvang. Since we had been told by the Ranger Station that all trails were gated we settled for finding the smallest road we could on the way up. At a bend in the 101 just at the top of a hill is a truck pull out and at the end of that is an unmarked road called La Lata Pl. (on the map) by taking that to the bottom of the hill and going right [View Full Entry]

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Day 4: 167 miles today with at least 60% of it off road! It’s hard to believe that something like that can be done in So. Cal.  As we were driving today Kari and I counted up the total vehicles that we had seen while running trails and we came up with a grand total of 5. If the idea of overland travel is to go by isolated routes, I think we were successful. Today while traveling we saw 2. Well actually we were passed by 4 dirt bikes at one point…but they only count as one, right? It was [View Full Entry]

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Day 5: We spent the night with Grandma Carole and Jenny. It was really nice to see them and get caught up on what happening in everyone’s lives. As far as our travel there is not a ton to say here. We got up early and had a delicious breakfast at Big Johns in Frazier Park then headed west. We stopped at the Ranger/Fire station to ask about road closures only to find that the major portion of our route was blocked by an obstinate property owner who had put his own locks on the forestry gates, and they couldn’t even [View Full Entry]

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Day Three: After a leisurely morning with time spent setting up this blog, we finally headed out about 11. The plan for the day was to explore the Holcomb Valley area and indeed we did, but not as we expected. It was a day filled with redirection, rerouting, and adapting. Though Overland Navigator is wonderful, there have been changes made since the maps used in the program were put out by the government. “Sensitive” areas blocked off by barbed wire fences have eliminated some roads totally, while others have been allowed to return to the forest or ended with campgrounds. [View Full Entry]

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Day Two: We slept in a bit, had breakfast, topped off the fuel and finally got rolling about 10:30. I wanted to take a route that I recalled from my youth that goes from Sugarloaf to Moonridge (though we would do it in reverse). We made our way through the Moonridge neighborhood via Sand Canyon and picked up the Sand Canyon trail. Along the way we found several offshoots that we explored and ran until the trail ended then came back out. Views, and wildlife are abundant and we even saw a deer, though it scampered off before we could get [View Full Entry]

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