"Catching a yellow-jacket in your shirt at seventy miles per hour
can double your vocabulary."
~Author Unknown
When I created my Updated Bucket List for YEAR 77 I listed a Harley day-ride on the 7th of each month. The idea was to ride to a place that had an interesting history and a fun route to ride on a motorcycle. Cook's Corner and the Ortega Highway certainly meet that criteria. The 7th doesn't always work, and Dale said he could meet me at Cook's Corner on Saturday November 18th, so we agreed to meet then for breakfast. Dale is no longer riding motorcycles, but he's always been a nut for hot rods, so he said he would come in his current hot rod.
The screen shot map below shows the location of Cook's Corner at the red dot on Santiago Canyon Road. My route from home was freeways from the north, getting off of Hwy 241 an traveling the last 12 miles on a fun Santiago Canyon Road - a total of 59 miles to Cooks Corner. When I left Cook's Corner to head home I went south and then east over the Ortega Highway (CA-74) through the Santa Ana Mountains to Lake Elsinore. The Ortega, due to its narrow width and many curves, holds an ominous claim to fame as one of the most dangerous highways in California. On this day there were no problems and I had an enjoyable ride. Then it was freeways from Lake Elsinore back home, for 118 miles from Cooks Corner, or a total mileage for the day of 177.
We purposefully arrived at Cook's Corner early so we could take some photos before the place was over-run with people. The last two photos are the eating area, bar and kitchen before people were lining up to order breakfast (see A Little History of Cook's Corner below).
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Cook's serves a hearty breakfast and Dale and I had a good visit and caught up on a few things while we ate. There are always vendors selling motorcycle clothes and paraphernalia and we did a little browsing, but didn't see anything we had to have. Also, there are usually some interesting bikes to look at. After Dale drew me a map for an interesting route to the Ortega Highway, and after we forgot to discuss our children so we could answer our wives questions when we got home, we headed out our separate ways.
Hell's Kitchen is a Biker's Bar & Restaurant that has been on Ortega Highway for many years. I have it listed on my planning schedule for a Harley day-ride next May, so I decided to stop for a few minutes on my way to Lake Elsinore to check it out. To my surprise, Hell's Kitchen is closed - don't know why or if they will ever reopen, but I guess I better choose another destination for my May day-ride. There is another stop on the Ortega, never as popular as Hell's Kitchen was, called Lookout Road House and I stopped there for a few minutes. See the photos below of Hell's Kitchen, the Lookout Road House, and views of the Lake Elsinore area from the Lookout Road House.
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A Little History of Dale's Hot Rods: Dale has had so many cars he can't remember them all. He calls them his "Hobby Cars" but I think of some of them as hot rods (not that I could give a precise definition of a hot rod). The photo below is his current ride, a 1931 Ford Coupe. The top is chopped 3-1/2 inches, has a 383 "Stroker Engine", with a Tremic 6-speed transmission. He calls this car "Mixed Ancestry" because it is made up from a bunch of different parts, from different cars, and different years. It is a true Hot Rod! He told me this morning that he is tiring of having hot rods and if someone would buy this '31 Coupe he would not get another one. Don't believe it !!!
The cars below are two he worked on and has since sold, and they fit my category as hot rods. The first one is a 1929 Ford Roadster Dale reconditioned. It was published in the three magazines shown in the second photo.
The truck in the second row is a 1940 Ford Pickup that needed to be totally redone when Dale got it. He said there was literally not one piece of the truck that was not torn apart. It turned out so nice it won almost every top award in the area, and was published in four different car magazines. Dales description: it had an up to date drive-train, with a small block Chevy engine, new boxed frame, a 700-R overdrive transmission, air bag suspension, air conditioning, red leather interior, a killer sound system, and too many other incidentals to list. The second photo shows the truck at "Blackie Gejeian's Fresno Autorama" in 2008. This was a show where Blackie selected the "Best of the Best" to be in his show, an honor for Dale's truck and the reconditioning work he did. I rode my Harley to Fresno to see the show that year.
In the third row is a 1929 Ford Model "A" Roadster Pickup. Dale decided to build what is termed a "Pre-War Hot Rod" which was to resemble something like what the guys were racing on the Dry Lakes before the war. It had high performance racing parts for a 4-cylinder motor. This car also turned out really nice and won multiple awards and was also published.
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Dale's other Hobby Cars: The cars below are also on Dale's historical car registry. From the top left they are, a 1929 Ford Four Door, a 1955 Chevy, a 1938 Ford, a 1963 Split Window Corvette, and a 1940 Chevrolet Special Deluxe Town Sedan. The last car, the 1940 Chevy, has a long history in the Hadfield family. I purchased the car in May of 1960, sold it to Dale in 1994, Dale completely restored it, doing most of the work himself (in the 2nd row middle photo below, see Dale working on the car in his garage with the transmission laying on the floor), then I bought it back from Dale in 2002, and then I sold it May of 2016. The Forty, as we always called the car, will be the subject of a separate special blog on it's sale date next May, but suffice it to say here that Dale did a wonderful job of reconditioning the Forty and put it in the shape you see in the last photo.
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A Little History of Cook's Corner - Cook's Corner is a Southern California bar built in 1884 that is popular with motorcyclists. It is located near Silverado in Trabuco Canyon, Orange County, California.
The building is named for Andrew Jackson Cook, a merchant who acquired 190 acres of land in the Orange County area and constructed the building soon after. In 1926, Cook's son converted the structure into a restaurant meant to supply food to miners and local ranchers. Seven years later, after the end of the Prohibition period, alcohol began being sold again, and Cook's was converted into a bar. The Cook family sold the bar, the Cook's family house, and about 40 acres of land in 1975 to Cheat'ah Engineering, a motorcycle accessories company. The company purchased Cook's as an investment, but also as a place where motorcycle clubs could gather in peace. The owners of Cheat'ah Engineering were proud of the fact that Cook's was a place to party with very few fights between motorcycle clubs and patrons. The owners established a policy where no motorcycle club colors were allowed at Cook's. Cook's became one of the more famous social places for bikers in Southern California. These owners sold Cook's in the 1980s.
Today's Cook's Corner is a wooden structure similar to a World War II-era restaurant and bar. The property includes a pool table, outdoor recreational area for horseshoe games, as well as trails for mountain biking and hiking. The majority of bikers come to Cook's Corner on the weekends, when Cook's hosts a number of events, mainly dealing with motorcycles, including the "CHOC ride of 2006," and the "9/11 Remembrance ride." On the first Sunday of May each year, about 2,000 come for the annual Blessing of the Bikes given by a priest of nearby St. Michael's Abbey.