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Motorcycling Advice for April near San Diego

In January 2007, somebody online asked about what to do if he had a couple of days to ride and could rent a bike in San Diego.

There was a lot of discussion of going up the coast, and back-and-forth about likely weather in normal and unusual years, but I posted this alternative advice:

For more-reliably-nice weather you can go east and a little north from San Diego. Look at a map for highways like CA78 and CA79, and Google for "Black Canyon Road." I haven't ridden all of these but they're widely written about.

Farther afield is the Palm Springs area. Look for wiggly roads like CA74 and CA243. The junction of those two is Mountain Center; Google that for writeups about roads in the area.

The trouble with CA Highway 1 is that the good stuff doesn't start until way north of Los Angeles: my map program says it's over seven hours (almost all freeway, and that's assuming no traffic delays!) from San Diego to San Simeon where CA1 really starts to rock. So consider that in your planning.