I had my two nights of staying with friends in the San Diego region, celebrating July 4th, nursing the resulting hangover, and just hanging out. It was time to head back to the mountains!
Back in September, 2014, I hiked up San Diego’s “Big” Black Mountain, located in Cleveland National Forest. It was also one of the first major off-road experiments that I took Tivona on back in December. To say that this is a spot that I already found to love would probably be an understatement. It is one of my favorite spots in San Diego, easily! With those previous experiences on the mountain, I had seen several places that looked perfect to set up a boondocking camp, and after stopping at the nearby National Forest District Headquarters to confirm the possibility, I came here to camp!
The road in was actually quite a bit more rutted out since the last time I took Tivona up here. However, that prior time, I was still on the stock all season tires, and Tivona is now wearing her new All-Terrain tires (Yokohama Geolander A/T-S). I remembered a few dicey spots on the clearance from the last time, and if anything, there were a couple of more this time. However, the new tires and some more practice off-roading, we made it all of the way up to the mountain summit without too much worry at all!
Unfortunately, the cell signal up at the summit was not very good at all, along with one of the other prime spots (or so I thought) for camping nearby. We had to turn back and go to another pretty clear camping location just off the road, where I’m getting awesome LTE signal from Verizon. Here, it’s a bit spotty on that signal, actually, due to the mountainous terrain surrounding me, but at the right spots, it is the best I’ve had boondocking to date!
I’ll be camping out up here for a while before heading North, and it really is a wonderful spot. Well worth the adventure of getting here!
