You wouldn’t think it, but the area we’re staying in has endless miles of rolling grassy hills with oak and manzanita trees. At leas, early in spring it’s green and inviting, though I’m sure it dries up in the summer. We found this gravel ride on the Fresno Cycling page so figured it was fairly good to go.
This ride starts at a trailhead for a hike down to a lake a little ways from the “town” of Raymond. Our route was a lollipop with a warm-up of 1.8 miles and then the last 11 on pavement with the rest on gravel. Most of the gravel is good, though there were a couple rough patches in the open range where cows roam and rough it up a bit. No big deal.
What I like about this ride is the lack of pretty much any cars for most of it. The gravel part is all farmland though I didn’t see many farms. It’s green grass and wildflowers for the most part. We did have a bit of bother when our right turn onto Beach Rd. had a gate across it with a sign to the right that said No Trespassing Private Property. We weren’t sure if the private property was off to the sides of the road, or somehow the whole road was now private property. I saw bike tracks and there were regular street signs warning of open range and what not. So, after hemming and hawing, I convinced Derek to ride it. We climbed a bunch on a dirt path that used to be a road, and came to yet ANOTHER gate with signs warning no trespassing. What to do? Continue on! Finally after another mile we popped out on Ben Hur Road and rewarded with a looooong downhill on pavement.
A couple rolling hills later and we were back to the mornings split and on down to the parking lot. I still don’t know if we were trespassing or what, but we made it safely back. It’s tough because we didn’t make this route up, we got it off a cycling website for the area.
Leave a Reply