I did this ride with Wes and Rick on 03/14/2009. It was a beautiful ride with one half in the desert and the other half in the mountains. We started in Palmdale and did the loop clockwise so we could catch the westerly afternoon breeze on the way back home (in the desert). It turns out that the wind was more out of the SSW so once we cleared the mountains and started heading back home, we had a vicious headwind whenever we turned southwards. (At least the easterly bits of the ride back were somewhat wind assisted.)
The ride was quite a bit more challenging than we expected, largely because we throught that we were going to ride 50 miles (instead of 60+ miles) and did not have a decent nutrition strategy. At least it is a pretty ride...especially the part on Pine Canyon Rd. and Three Points Rd.
Rick and Wes heading WNW along Pine Canyon Rd.
Wildflowers on the hills heading north on
Three Points Rd. (Tehachapi Mts in the background)
We also stopped at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Preserve on the way back. (You can see the spur on the map.) We did see a few poppies by the roadside, but nothing that great. Give it a few more weeks.... For the Google Earth datafile, right click and save as three_points.kml to download the coordinates.