Road Trip

Spunky Canyon

by Dan Empfield 1/22/02
(www.northstarusers.com)

Faith is an exercise in adventure, and it only seems fair that an adventure should require an element of faith. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get on a road trip, and that's as it should be. It's not an adventure if you know in advance how it's going to turn out.

Monty and I had spent an evening and a day on the eastern (desert) side of the San Gabriel Mountains. Devil's Punchbowl County Park and points adjacent are in Los Angeles County, but this isn't the Los Angeles you think it is. This is the L.A. that nobody ever sees (that's why we go there). It's the L.A. nobody expects to see. This side of the San Gabriels is the converse of what's on the front side in every way.

This was our second consecutive trip to this spot, and we were in the mood for something we hadn't seen before, so we thought we'd mosey north on the Pearblossom Highway. A geologist can easily find this road from a hundred miles up, as it was built directly atop the San Andreas Fault. At right is a satellite photo of the spot we were to visit next, and the pink area up top is the northern terminus of the Antelope Valley. You can see how the green shaded areas above and below the pink converge, and you'd see that the Tehachapi and the Grapevine Mountains meet at a point if the picture extended past its left margin. You can also see that the lower edge of the (pink) Antelope Valley goes straight through Lake Hughes and trends Northwest. that obvious line is the San Andreas Fault.

We headed north on what carries the numerical designation of route #138. It will remain the #138 until the Big One hits, at which point it will be renamed Highway #1 on account of its hugging (what will be) the new California coastline, after the western half falls off. When you cross the #14 Freeway (on which the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale sit, and where you'll find Edwards Air Force Base, where the Space Shuttle lands) the Pearblossom Highway becomes Lake Elizabeth Road. Lake Elizabeth—the lake and the town—is right next to Lake Hughes, which you can barely see in the photo above. In fact, that black spot might be Lake Elizabeth. I don't know. It's one lake or t'other. In any case, we never did see Lake Elizabeth because we turned due west on the road to Bouquet Reservoir. We then turned North on a road leading over Spunky Summit, and it was there we entered the Twilight Zone.

Consider that I hadn't heard Joe Frank on the radio for twelve or fifteen years. I didn't know if he was alive or dead or in either case still being broadcast. Yet I was flipping the radio dial and there he was. On. This was an omen. If you don't know who Joe Frank is, here's a link to KCRW, where you can hear past radio broadcasts via streaming audio. You'll see what I mean. What David Lynch is to film and Stephen King is to literature, Joe Frank is to audio, except that Joe Frank is much worse, in the best sense of the word.

Spunky Canyon was Monty's call all the way. Bouquet Reservoir Road had at least a half-dozen icons adjacent to it on the map designating campgrounds. Before that, though, was the turnoff to Spunky Canyon. This road had only one campground icon. Monty pinned our hopes on that one, instead of the other road's six. I just think he liked the name Spunky Canyon.

Up and over Spunky Pass we drove, and it was apparent that yet again, as has been the case so many times in our travels, a road cyclist had laid out this bit of pavement. A motorist's hell always, ipso facto, translates into a road cyclist's heaven—building the maximum number of miles of roadway into a given mileage as-the-crow-flies.

We descended into Spunky Canyon and pulled into the Campground. Out came Dave, the camp host. Dave looks like Santa. Especially from the neck up. Before I asked him I already knew he'd been camp host here when some of his campground's oaks were seedlings.

"Pick out a couple of spots," he told Monty and I and we did.

After we'd eaten dinner Monty said, "Let's go say hi to Dave," figuring the old fellow and his dog—Spunky—didn't get much company.

We walked over to the quanset-hut-shaped tent, in which a light was glowing. We rounded the corner to the tent's entrance, and expected to find a lonely old man with his dog, perhaps watching Bonanza reruns on an old portable TV. But there Dave was behind a full bar with almost every stool taken, bellowing, "Welcome, what'll you have. Beer? Cocktail? Margarita?"

On the bar was cheese, crackers, pretzels and salami, all sliced and presented party-style. In one end of the tent-bar was a wood-burning stove keeping everyone festive and toasty. Above the bar was, "...the only ceiling fan in any tent in the Angeles National Forest," boasted Dave.

So much for lonely Dave.

Spunky Canyon Campground sits at 3000' or 3600', depending on whether you trust my altimeter (the lower estimate) or Dave. It seemed pretty oaky for 3600'. No pines on the peeks that I could see around us.

In the morning, though, it was cold like 7600', but just the same I yanked out my bicycle and rode up the winding road to—what?—Spunky Summit I suppose, for lack of any other name, and down the other side to Bouquet Reservoir. If you're into triathlons, which Monty and I am—and especially if you've put on these swim-bike-run races—as Monty and I have, you can't help pondering this lake and these roads and wondering what sort of race you'd stage here—a successful one, perhaps.

Before I left on my little ride Dave was at the bar, this time with hot coffee. Dave has transcended the need for sleep. His bar—now transformed into breakfast nook—has on its walls dozens of cards and letters and photos. Many are from those in law enforcement. "This whole wall is police, sheriffs and judges," says Dave. "Guy comes in here one time, asks, 'Do you know if that's a judge over in that camp spot?' Seems that judge'd put the fellow away for something. But we never have any trouble here. Always a cop or two. Look there, that's a photo of 24 cops staying here all at one time, and we only have ten spots."

If you don't want to ride in either direction past the front of Dave's Spunky Canyon Campground, you can run out the back of it. A single-track trail will lead you from the campground to the Pacific Crest Trail, only two miles distant. Monty stayed on foot this morning, and that's what he did.

I rode over Spunky Summit, and back to Bouquet Reservoir Road. I turned my bike toward Santa Clarita and descended past the spillway. Houses lined the creek adjacent to Bouquet Canyon Road for fifteen or twenty miles down to Santa Clarita (close to Magic Mountain). They were all of a theme, with a raised basement of slate rock, and either a rock or wooden superstructure. The structire at left was entirely made of rock.

Over Spunky Summit and down the hill quite a few miles to where I turned around to re-ascend to Bouquet Reservoir, one care passed on my side of the road. My kind of place.

I drove back to San Diego and Monty to L.A., and Angelenos will be happy to know that Spunky Canyon and the adjacent charming white-trash hamlet of Green Valley are maybe an hour, or an hour and a quarter, from downtown L.A. If you're coming, bring your bike and your running shoes. Roads for riding are everywhere, and if you shoot out the back of the Spunky Canyon campground it's only a couple of miles on a single-track before you intersect the Pacific Crest Trail.