Tijeras Creek / Arroyo Trabuco Loop

The Tijeras Creek / Arroyo Trabuco Loop


Navigating around Coto de Caza (some street riding)


blue arrow=jump on the dirt trail, orange arrow=entrance into O'Neill

Tijeras Creek Trail

Coastal Indian Paintbrush along Tijeras Creek

Since we live about 2 miles from one of the entrances to the O’Neill Wilderness area, this seems to be the park that we are spending most of the time exploring since it does not require loading up the car. Today’s ride was the Tijeras Creek / Arroyo Trabuco Loop which ended up just shy of 20 miles. There are several possible places to park (no actual Park parking is available, neighborhoods/shopping mall parking); Oso/Antonio Pkwy to enter at Oso, Bienvenidos and Antonio Pkwy to enter at the Bienvenidos entrance.

Starting at the Oso entrance and take the Tijeras Creek trail behind the Las Flores apartments. It is a crushed gravel trail with great views of the canyon. At one point, the trail pops out onto Antonio Pkwy for about 100 yards and then pops back in behind more apartments. Once the trail gets into the wilderness area, there are about 10 ‘whoop di doos’ (series of hills) to navigate that end under the Foothill Transportation Corridor (FTC). The whoop di’s are a blast, the climbs out (the ‘do’s) not so much. Right now the trail is surrounded by fields of lupines and mustards. Once past the FTC, the Tijeras Creek trail meanders through meadows, along the Tijeras Creek and under canopies of oak groves. With the exception of a few rocky drops and climbs (easy to walk your bike through), this is a great beginner off-road single track trail.

The Tijeras Creek trail ends at Plano Trabuco Road. Follow Plano Trabuco Road for a few miles. When the road starts getting scary, there is an option to hop onto a dirt trail on the left side of the road-get on it. After about a mile, there will be an entrance gate into O’Neill Park, go through and turn Left. Ride towards the back of the park to the Arroyo Trabuco Trail.

March of the Caterpillars at Riley Wilderness Park

Today we headed to the Thomas F. Riley Wilderness Park for some mountain biking and wildflower hunting. In addition to several miles of hiking/biking trails, Riley Wilderness Park has a visitor’s / nature center (1 tarantula, 2 snakes, and a kids interpretive area), and a butterfly garden (which was still dormant). You can also purchase your OC Parks annual pass here. The trails are multi-use; bikes, boots and hooves but no dogs. We rode all of the trails except for Skink (Vista Point) and Horned Toad (Vista Point) and clocked about 5 miles around the park. Not a lot of miles but the hills were challenging even though I opted out on riding up to the vistas.

The word of the day is CATERPILLARS. There were caterpillars everywhere, making 'low impact' riding a challenge. I am not terribly confident on my identification of the caterpillars but the closest I could find would be Painted Lady. If anyone knows what they are (picture above), please share. We observed some interesting human behavior today on the trail. There were several families hiking and all of the little girls were trying to catch the caterpillars, pet them and take them home to love. The little boys, on the other hand, were having contests to step on as many as possible. Fortunately for the caterpillars, there were twice as many little girls than boys out hiking today.

Wildlife sightings: caterpillars. In keeping with my nature spotting ‘luck’, after 15 miles of riding around wilderness areas, the best find was at home: a raptor hunting from my backyard fence. I think it may be a kite but am not sure since I cannot find a match in my bird book.