I have a Jeep Wrangler. Not a souped up one, as my Jeep is my daily driver and the gas mileage is low enough as it is for commuting to and from work as it is. I’ve always been a bit conservative with the roads I take off-roading, though perhaps that’s my own cowardice and not the actual limitations of my vehicle. Corral Canyon in San Diego was a great place for me to take my Jeep for a bit of fun.
Phillip got a KRL 650 last year around his birthday. Due to the coronavirus, our original plans for his birthday this year were cancelled, so we planned an alternative that complied with social distancing. Phillip found a place in rural San Diego County called Corral Canyon, an off roading area that advertised clear trail ratings.
Coincidentally, we had been watching a survival show series called “I Shouldn’t Be Alive,” so due to paranoia, I got Phillip a survival kit for his birthday, including a small day pack, reusable, collapsible water bottle, water cleaning tabs, fire starter, among other survival gear. We threw the pack in the Jeep, grabbed a few other supplies and a picnic lunch, and headed on our way.
The trails were fairly easy. However, we hadn’t been going for more than twenty minutes when my light bar fell off. The screw attaching the light bar to the mounting brackets stripped out, so the whole bar swung down onto my windshield. I couldn’t keep on going, so I stopped to try to figure out how to take the bar off or reattach it. Phillip was much faster on his KLR, so he got pretty far ahead of me before he realized I had fallen behind. When he got back to me, he somehow found the missing screw in mere seconds. Even though it was stripped, we wrapped some electrical tape from his tool kit around it, screwed it back in, and zip tied the whole assembly back to the mounting brackets. After about a twenty minute delay, we were back on our way.
After about an hour of bumping around, we found a nice picnic spot to eat our lunch of homemade sourdough bread, salami, and fresh mozzarella cheese, reminiscent of our lunches in Italy.
After our picnic, we had two routes back to the interstate that didn’t include doubling back the way we came. However, we only got ten minutes down the trail before realizing that the final few miles were a motorcycle only trail. While Phil could have kept on, the trail was likely not suitable for the Jeep. The next trail ended up a loop, and finally, we just had to double back. Thankfully, the whole expedition only took an hour on the return, which was less time than what it took to get out!
Next time, we hope to get to a few of the recommended sites, such as Four Corners or the Bobcat campground, but we’ll have to find the other route into the OHV area from the south.
