So off and on I get asked where are good places to take kids riding. On my website to-do list for quite sometime has been to create a where to take a kid guide. Lake Hodges, Big Laguna Trails, Penaqsuitos Canyon are places on the list but I had been thinking about some of the smaller places that would be good for the MTBer with little wheels would be. Guajome Park is one of those places good for the grommet MTBers to get a taste of dirt.
Guajome Park (Or as my kids like to call it “Yo Hommie Park” is located on the east side of Oceanside right off of Highway 76. It is a county park that has a campground, a couple of small ponds and a series of trails that are no so overly engineered with split rail fencing and compacted non-native soil dirt sidewalks like are prevalent in many of the county parks near the urban environment. This place still allows for kids to interact with the environment instead of just look at it. When my kids where younger we used to hike out here often and go just out the little nooks and crannies of the place.
Last week I was talking to youngest son Jake about the park and that I wanted to get a webpage together so Jake decided to join me on the photo, map recon effort.
With about 4.5 miles of trail out here it can be quite fun for newbie kid. Even an a newbie adult who is willing to do a lot of hamster wheeling can find the place fun.
There are mainly fireroads here but there are also enough singletrack bits to keep a kid well engaged. There are two different playgrounds at the park as well as large population of resident ducks that quite fond of stale loaf bread. This would be a great place to take a little kid out for his first “big” MTB adventure as there are lots of opportunities to do other things besides ride the bike.
When I say “little” kids I’m generally thinking newbies on bikes with less than 26″ wheels as once they get to that big, this place can get rather small and you would have to get creative at this place at that point. Here is Jake working on riding this telephone pole skinny. It took him a while to get the technique down but he eventually was able to hop up on the log at the skinny end and ride the whole thing.
This was an after school ride for Jake and we played around here until we ran out of daylight and had to head back for things like dinner and homework. Good midweek stoke.