I was in northern CA the week of July 10th and rode two days in Annadel state park (http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=480). It was the highlight of my trip but nearly the ruin of it as well.

The first day I rode, I arrived at the park around 1230. Stopped at the self-registration podium, payed my 4 bucks to park inside the park boundaries. I found out later that the locals park outside and ride into the park thereby foregoing the 4 buck parking fee.

Anyway from the parking lot, I started a 2.5 mile climb up the Warren Richardson/Two Quarry Trail. It was tough, but utterly fantastic. I should have prefaced this by noting that I live and ride in Tucson AZ and so the terrain was completely different than what I’m accustomed to. No cactus, yeah, my tires were thanking me. I played around for 2 hours on the myriad of trails throughout the park. After the climb, I was greeted with a mixture of fast singletrack as well as rocky, technical downhills a few shorter, technical climbs, and a little fireroad trail around lake Ilsanjo. It really is a “something for everyone” place to ride. Saw some fool swimming in the lake which seemed to me filled with goose crap so I took the more prudent route and just ate my clif bar on a lakeside picnic table and snapped a few pictures of the place.

Anyway as I was leaving the park, I passed by the self-registration podium and realized that I’d left my wallet sitting on the podium two hours ago when I registered. I quickly turned around but alas, no wallet. I tried finding the rangers but there were none around so I started cancelling my credit cards and putting a fraud alert on Experion account. There wasn’t much money about 20.00 bucks but simply replacing all the other stuff was going to be a real hassle.

The next day, I checked my home voice mail and there was a message from one of the rangers that someone had turned in my wallet. My faith in humanity was restored but even better I had an excuse to go back to the park to ride which I did that afternoon and had another awesome day in the saddle.