Travel/POI: Glendora Mountain Road, California USA

Glendora Mountain Road is a very scenic mountain drive in the US state of California. It’s 34.76km (21.6 miles) long, extending north from the city of Glendora (in the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County) to Mount Baldy (in San Bernardino County). The road is commonly known as GMR by locals. It was a nice day on Sunday (2023.02.19) so we wanted to go for a ride to check it out. The road is totally paved but it is pretty steep. We did not see many cars but a bunch of people rode bikes up the hill. I really admire the physical strength and endurance of these people. It is really not easy to ride such a steep slope all the way.

1: It is refreshing to look far from up high.

2: Looking at the snow-capped mountains on one side, and overlooking the San Gabriel River on the other. We also found very tiny wildflowers (common stork's-bill) at our feet.

3: Mountains and river from different angles.

4: There are mountains, valleys and people who ride hard to climb up.

My husband originally planned to drive to Mount Baldy through Glendora Ridge road. But when we got there we found out that Glendora Ridge road was closed so we continued going down Glendora Mountain road. My husband stopped at the Oaks picnic area to check the map. I noticed the stream of the San Gabriel River was clear. Watching it streaming down was very relaxing.

When driving down the mountain, we suddenly saw a group of people parked on the side of the road to watch something. We also saw some people even sitting on folding chairs, eating snacks and seemingly watching a good show. Driven by curiosity, we also stopped the car to see what was happening. It turned out that a bunch of off-road vehicles were playing on the uneven river bed, but one of them was stuck in the mud and several vehicles tried to drag it out. One of them even broke down because of this and was dragged away by one other vehicle. After a while somehow the car stuck in the mud drove itself out of the mud. What an interesting event that we witnessed on a Sunday morning outing.