San Gabriel river bike path

There was a meetup bike ride last Saturday on a bike path in the east end of L.A., on the San Gabriel river bike path.  I carpooled there with a friend, but we got stuck in the notorious highway 10 traffic, and missed the group's departure by about 3 minutes!  However, we had a nice ride anyway, just not with the group.  Easier to stop for lots of pictures with just two of us anyway!

Here's the park at the start of the path, where we parked:

 

This is taken from a bridge that connects the park to the bike path:

  

Here is the bike path heading north.  Not bad scenery!

  

There are several gravel pits along the path, here's one in the distance:

  

In a valley at the north end of the path is a gated community, not sure what it's called:

  

  

This is an interesting plant.  It's got a spiky roundish base, with a woody stem up the middle, and then it seems to have the flowering portion at the part.  I have no idea what it's called, and I don't remember seeing it before today.  I liked both my photos of it so I'm inflicting both of them on you:

  

  

Another view of the mountains from the bike path, I liked the bushy vegetation in the foreground.  Yes, that's a billboard in the centre of the photo, this is California.

  

The bike path crosses the Santa Fe dam.  My friend and I were very curious about this dam, as it's huge, and the San Gabriel river is a tame-looking, insipid little thing.  I'm sure it's livelier after a rain, but it doesn't look like it could ever take out the city of Los Angeles, and the dam is big enough (the photo doesn't do it justice) that it looks like that's what they're trying to prevent.  I couldn't find out why it's so huge on the internet, but I assume the engineers know something we don't:

  

The land within the dam is parkland:

  

Views from the dam are very good in all directions, here's one:

  

It was a great ride!  About 18 miles round-trip.