Driving Full Circle on Scenic Back Roads

Thanks in part to our southern neighbors’ xenophobia, denizens of the Los Angeles Basin often miss out on some great driving when contemplating places to head for a Sunday spin.

We’re not talking about Baja California, although passport and insurance rules do make it difficult to launch a spur-of-the-moment trip farther south than Ensenada on the thousand-mile peninsula.

We’re talking about San Diego County, separated from the rest of Southern California by Camp Pendleton and by San Diegans’ own oft-proclaimed loathing of everything north of the giant Marine Corps base.

It isn’t that they single out and harass visitors down there, it’s just that they don’t like to let us know about the glories of the county’s still-rugged inland territories.

Indeed, it is tempting to keep quiet about places like Pauma Valley, with its scenic farms and tree-lined roads; the cool mountain air, twisting approaches and great bed-and-breakfast inns of Julian; the pine-bordered esses of the Laguna Mountains; the rugged terrain and sweeping vistas of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, whose main thoroughfare, County Road S2, follows an old Overland Stage Line route; and the oak-studded hills (if not the ever-present Border Patrol agents) of winding California 94, which loosely parallels the border with Mexico.

But inland San Diego is being discovered: New housing developments are encroaching at a rapid clip, and in parts it is starting to look a lot like Orange County.

So our advice is to start your engines and head south for some wonderful driving while the roads there are still wide open and the vistas worth viewing.

True, you’ll have to put up with some nasty traffic getting there, but the mess we’ve made of the Santa Ana and San Diego freeways are old hat for Southern California trekkers, the penance we must pay before we can enjoy the open road.

One way to sample the territory is to take a perimeter tour that starts just below Camp Pendleton, wanders up and down the inland valleys and mountains to Julian, darts down into Anza-Borrego and then picks up Interstate 8 and Highway 94 to carry you back into downtown San Diego.

There are two main routes into San Diego County from the north--the San Diego Freeway (I-5) along the coast or, for those traveling from places like Placentia and Pomona, the Escondido Freeway (I-15) down past Lake Elsinore and through Temecula.

From the I-5, pick up California 76 in Oceanside and head inland. The highway follows the San Luis Rey River for 17.5 miles, passing Mission San Luis Rey and heading through Bonsall before hitting I-15, where, if you use the Escondido Freeway to start this trip, you’d get off at California 76 and head inland roughly eastward.

The road continues following the river as you twist through hilly terrain past Mission San Antonia de Pala. The scenery for the next 37 miles is old California foothill--grassy fields, oaks, roadside campgrounds and ranch buildings. The road rises and falls with the hills and alternates between long, sweeping curves and esses of varying complexity.

At 22.2 miles from the I-15 junction you’ll pass Lake Henshaw on the left, and 4.5 miles later Highway 76 ends in a T intersection with California 79.

Take a right there and head into Santa Ysabel, a little town with several antique shops and restaurants and a bakery, Dudley’s, that San Diego friends say is famous all over the county for its fresh breads.

From Santa Ysabel you’ll head up into the mountains on California 79 for about seven miles, past Wynola and into Julian, a picturesque old mining town now given over largely to restaurants, inns and galleries and surrounded by high-country apple orchards.

If you haven’t had lunch, or have dallied long enough so that it’s dinner time when you hit Julian, this is a great place to grab some--although on weekends the restaurants can fill up pretty quickly. (Hint: Calling ahead for reservations is a good idea. Regional travel guides, including AAA’s California-Nevada Tourbook, list many of Julian’s inns.)

Because you can spend a lot of time in and around Julian, it is a good spot to end a day trip. Just reverse directions to get home, or if you want to see some new sights, take California 79 north back up to I-15. You’ll pass through Warner Springs, Dodge Valley and Aguanga on a road every bit as rustic and fun to drive as California 76.

But if you are a driver and are pressing on from Julian, head north out of town and down the mountain on California 78. There’s a sharp right bend just past Camp Stevens a few miles outside Julian and you’ll be heading east again, toward Whispering Pines and down the steep Banner Grade.

After about nine miles you’ll hit County Road S2 where it enters the 600,000-acre Anza-Borrego Desert State Park--it’s a right-hand turn at Scissors Crossing into the park (the town of Borrego Springs, with its visitor center, is about 18 miles beyond this point, east on California 78 to County Road S3, then north).

Back at Scissors Crossing, though, the turn onto S2 takes you on a 40-mile trip through the desert rockery of Earthquake Valley, down into Agua Caliente Springs and through the aptly named Carrizo Badlands before exiting the park and connecting with I-8 on the western edge of Imperial County.

Hop onto I-8 heading west and climb the steep Jacumba Wilderness grade to Carrizo Gorge road--a trek of about 10 miles. Head south on Carrizo Gorge about half a mile until it dead-ends at Old Highway 804. Turn left and head west to the junction with California 94, just past Jewell Valley Road.

Then take 94 west for a 50-mile drive along a scenic country highway that combines hairpins and straightaways in just about equal measure. You’ll pass through the little burg of Dogpatch--really--and the town of Campo, site of the San Diego Railroad Museum.

You won’t see the border on your drive along California 94, but it is there, just over the rugged hills to the south. You will, however, pass through a fixed Border Patrol checkpoint just outside Campo, and you’ll probably see lots of U.S. Border Patrol vans and sport-utilities and a fair sprinkling of sheriff’s vehicles--fair warning to the lead-footed.

If you want to do a little shopping south of the border, and time permits, take a quick jog south on California 188 at Potrero--halfway through your jaunt along 94--and you’ll drop down into Tecate, a two-mile run through the hills.

Heading west on California 94 from Potrero, you’re in ranch country, with rugged, scrub-covered hills on both sides of the road until you hit Jamul. From there it’s about 11 miles to Spring Valley and the transition from country road to freeway--the highway becomes the Martin Luther King Freeway and takes you through Lemon Grove and into San Diego proper along the southern end of Balboa Park. There the highway transitions into the I-5--you’ll want to head north.

At this point, you’ve got several options, including a stop in San Diego; a jog over to Coronado Island or south into Tijuana; a straight shot north up the freeway to home; or my preferred option to cap a long day behind the wheel, a jog over to the coast at La Jolla for a more scenic drive north to Oceanside with the late-evening sun just settling into the Pacific on your left.

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Fellow Travelers

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