WEEKEND RUNS MARCH THUR JUNE 2020
Upon getting word from our Governor for all Californians to stay home, the club immediately cancelled all planned near-term activities. That included the *Barely North of the Border” run scheduled for March 21. The organizers of the run and a couple of others decided to drive the route as planned. We followed the guidelines of social distancing,
Masks when not in the car, and no more than ten people when gathering. The BBQ restaurant we planned to eat at provided food to go and found a nearby park to ate. It turns out to be a fantastic day with great weather, beautiful scenery, and not a vehicle in sight. It was tempting to turn the horses loose, but the Sherriff and CHP had little else to do. We enjoyed the experience so much we repeated it several times over the next 12 weeks completing about nine runs of various length and covering a lot of Southern California’s back roads. We encountered several challenges in planning our routes. Where to find restrooms, places to eat and what was open or not. One run started going north to San Juan Capistrano, east to Lake Elsinore, Hemet, and Palm Desert, then south to Salton Sea and El Centro, then home. That was exhausting, but what the hell, what else was there to do. We saw every type of topography there is from the ocean, the foothills, lakes, snow covered mountains (we stayed just below snow levels), desert, farm country and then back over the mountains to the sea.
We did a slow run along the coast from just south of Oceanside, thru Carlsbad, Encinitas, Solana Beach to Torrey Pines. Then to La Jolla where we were able to park six vehicles in a row on Coast Blvd overlooking the cliffs to watch waves breading over the rocks below, unreal! We continued along the ocean thru Bird Rock to Pacific and Mission Beach. We took a short break at the roller coaster and headed to Harbor Drive and downtown San Diego. Again, zero traffic. Out of nowhere, we were joined by another group of Corvettes in front of the convention center who followed us over the bridge to Coronado where we pulled into the parking lot at the Ferry Landing only to be joined by several Coronado Police vehicles. BUSTED!!! No, The Corvettes were a club from Carson and the police were there to check out our cars. Like I said earlier, not much for the police to do (before all hell broke out a few weeks later)! The run ended in Imperial Beach. Unbelievable day!
We witnessed some unreal experiences of driving thru the heart of many municipalities and finding not a sole anywhere, zero traffic and nothing open. It felt like something out of the movies, ghost towns everywhere. Driving some of the best roads that are perfectly suited for a Corvette (and Southern California has some of the best you can find} with no traffic was the best experience ever.
We did encounter some “you have to move on or not here experiences”. A Sherriff in Borrego had us leave when we stopped to look at a metal sculpture located off the road in the desert. She was very polite and came up to us saying she was the “party pooper” and we needed to leave. We did! We were told we could not eat our sandwiches on the sidewalk in front of the Deli in Hemet. The Deli was told that their customers could not consume their food there. We moved to the street, not a problem. In Ramona, a park ranger told us we could not use the picnic tables, we got out our lawn chairs. We did have a lot of fun on these journeys, but we did not want to draw any unwanted attention while doing so.
As restrictions were relaxed over time, we expanded our list of drivers and participants. The run to Palomar Mountain had about fifteen to twenty cars. The video below filmed by the daughter of Tony and Julie Pergola, captures essence of this and many of the runs we experienced over the last few months. We plan to incorporate many of the new routs we took in future club sponsored runs.
Core participants who attended most of these runs were Fred Taylor, Roberta Degener, Chris Spenser, Sam Lewis, Leah Johnson, Michael & Jayme Fuchs, and me,
Ken Carson
Activities Chair