Days 6 Nights 5 Ride Days 6 Start Dates February 8, 2009 March 1, 2009 December 5, 2009 Start City San Diego Finish City San Diego Activity Level 3-5 Daily Distance 35-75 Per Person Price $1794 Single Supplement $580

Warm Winter Bike Tour—California Desert Escape

Take a vacation from the Winter blues on a road bike tour in the California Desert

Consider the ingredients necessary for the perfect Winter bicycle tour. The weather has to be warm and dry. The roads have to be great for cycling. And to make it an Undiscovered Country tour, the location has to be, essentially, undiscovered—but not so undiscovered as to be without the comforts of civilization.

Amazingly, there is a spot on the map that has the right mix of ingredients for the ideal Winter bike tour. Just a short distance away from the major coastal city of San Diego lies the Anza-Borrego Desert, a great dry basin ringed by high mountains. In the center of this large desert park is Borrego Springs, a “quaint desert resort town with no traffic and clean air”. Wide and empty roads stretch across the valley floor with mountain vistas in every direction. Warm weather, a quiet town, empty biking roads, great lodging and dining: these are the ingredients that make up an ideal Undiscovered Country trip.

And while cycling and relaxing daily in a quaint desert resort town makes for a wonderful tour, this itinerary has a little more variety to keep things interesting. The tour starts out in the Temecula Wine Country, travels over the mountains to Palm Desert, cruises through the Coachella Valley to the Salton Sea, rolls through the Badlands of Anza-Borrego Desert to Borrego Springs. For an exhilirating finish, the tour climbs out of the desert to the orchard country town of Julian, then follows the scenic ridgeline road separating mountains and desert before returning to San Diego.

If you like cycling rides in Winter without multiple layers of fleece and Gore-Tex, touring on our California Desert Escape may be just the trip you’ve been looking for.

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