Santa Fe Dam’s Back Side

When I was a kid, my parents used to take me to this dam all the time. It was one of the only places where you could get into the water and swim that's fairly similar to a beach.

It was so popular that they would have to close it sometimes on the weekend because it would reach its maximum capacity of people. It wasn’t rare to find a line of cars waiting on the road to see whether someone would leave and they could go in.

This dam seemed so huge when I was a kid. You were only allowed to go where the water and the grass was, so you couldn’t explore too much, but even that seemed so massive.

Behind the water, there is a place to fish. Most people would come finishing in the afternoon though, once everyone was gone. They would close the main gate and you had to come in through the north side, which was free.

The backside of this damn is nothing but dirt and tall grass. There's some dry bushes too that have thorns so it’s best not to go in them. Some people use this area to ride their dirt bikes, but it’s not as popular as you’d think.

We took Lin’s car through this dirt road, avoiding pot holes and bushes and trying desperately not to get stuck.

Once we reached the rear entrance to the bike route, we parked the car and got ready to walk along the bike route on top of the dam’s wall. We were trying to catch the sunset and we were right on time.

The only issue was that there was a lot of homeless people hiding in the bushes. They seemed to have made their homes inside of the bushes. But not only that, they all started to stare at the car and walk around it while we were halfway up the bike route.

I didn’t feel like risking a bad situation so I told everyone we should just leave. Something Lin was happy to hear since she was tripping out too.

As soon as we got to the car, I volunteered to drive through the darker dirt path now. As soon as we began to drive, a few people approached us and started asking us to roll down the window to ask us questions.  We heard someone ask us “Are you looking for someone”.

That's when we knew we had to get the hell out of there. People out here looking for drugs. We saw a few normal people coming in and out too. I guess they were also looking for someone.

I took some decent photos and the experience was something we weren’t going to forget anytime soon, so it was time well spent.