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May 19, 2025About Us

More Trail to Nowhere© Bothersome Stuff

Reading the staff report for the May 20th Trail to Nowhere© rehash I came across this little nugget:

Early in the design phase, the construction cost was estimated at $4million. Because of City Council direction to keep within the estimate, staff simplified the trail crossing at Richman Avenue, and simplified the connection at Independence Park to reduce the total estimated cost prior to putting out to bid.

$4,000,000?! How on earth did staff get to that number for construction? Who knows? And how did it become $1,800,000? The following sentence shines the light on staff’s desire to look like they waged a ruthless war of economy – only listing a couple of minor items that don’t add up to millions. But boy they sure were trying hard to follow “City Council Direction” to keep within the estimate, whatever that was.

But of course they failed. And the new City’s share for this boondoggle rose 91% to $630,000.

Even more disturbing to me is what I believe is an artificially low-bid, made to fit exactly the so-called “Engineer’s Estimate” provided to bidders – $1,845,776. How that number relates to a $4,000,000 the “early design” estimate I’ll ignore.

The real issue to me is whether the contractor wrote off their profit and overhead to get this job. The median bid for this project was $2,286,000 – $440,000 and 24% more than the low bid. I think somebody kept sharpening their pencil ’til there was nothing left but wood shavings and graphite dust. Either that or they bungled the bid. If that’s the case we may definitely expect change orders to help bolster the contractor’s motivation for the job. The consequences are the same.

The public doesn’t even get to see the plan for the job. I suspect the Council hasn’t seen a final design either, even though they’re expected to approve it. One thing the agenda item does include “are a few elevations “3D renderings” (above) of the trail at four points. There are lots of happy, recreating people shown, verdant flower beds and mature trees. There’s nothing that looks like the forlorn neglect of Phase I. No drug deals, no graffiti and no homeless.

Something else is missing, too. For some reason the renderings ignore the clear 10ft buffer zones required by the Council back in January, 2024. Maybe these views are just holdovers from before the thing was approved. If so, that’s just sloppy and lazy.

Ironically, Trail to Nowhere© advocates are getting shortchanged and don’t even know it. The original bike trail was supposed to be concrete and is now just cheaper asphalt. The 10,560 shrubs described in the grant application are now just 600. But it’s all great. City Hall is giving “them” something good.

May 18, 2025May 18, 2025About Us

Joshua’s Journey on the Trail to Nowhere©

by Mr. Peabody15 Comments

It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

Our friend Joshua Ferguson has done Fullerton a solid, taking the time to create a video of the notorious Trail to Nowhere© site. He starts at the west and heads east documenting the dilapidation, gang graffiti, trash, and general unhealthy and unsafe nature of the environment on and next to the proposed trail.

A couple of things to remember that City staff steadfastly refuses to acknowledge:

Phase II does not connect to Phase I
Phase I is a design failure, a total maintenance disaster, and is unused by anybody
The existing Phase I “trail” ends at the fenced off Poisoned Park. The original “trail” went through the park and ended at the old UP bridge over Harbor Blvd. After that it just turns into a regular sidewalk, not a recreation trail.

Here’s the video. It’s well worth watching.

Fullerton’s Union Pacific Trail Betrayal – YouTube

I sure hope Dunlap, Valencia and Jung get the opportunity to see this video and realize that this “project” was never more than a bundle of lies, misinformation, omitted facts, and constant pressure from people who didn’t and don’t know what they’re talking about.

There are no potential users, there is no connectivity, there is no money for maintenance; there is a history of failure, a hollow, patronizing gesture by lefties, make-work for City employees, and nonsense-talk from a handful of locals manipulated by Ahmad Zahra. And oh, yeah, an ever-escalating cost to the citizens of Fullerton, that has quadrupled in five years.

May 9, 2025May 9, 2025About Us

Trail to Nowhere© Hits Embarrassing Snag

by Mr. Peabody14 Comments

On Tuesday the seemingly inevitable rubber stamp of the Trail to Nowhere© contract award didn’t happen. That’s thanks to the presentation of facts that were deliberately being obscured by City Staff in an incompetent agenda report.

Public speaker Joshua Ferguson raised the issue of the increased City cost that FFFF raised, here; and noted that the phrase “increase in scope” was marvelously uninformative.

When the “Consent Calendar” finally rolled around, Councilman Nick Dunlap, to his credit, pulled the item for discussion. Once again Mr. Ferguson unloaded on the lack of transparency, and the failure to describe why the City cost had doubled. He also correctly observed the likelihood of more and more costs as the project was being built. Fullerton Engineer has already expertly shared the likelihood of that, here, when he predicted an eventual City borne cost increase of $800,000. At $630,000 we’re getting there real fast, and a shovel hasn’t even broken the contaminated soil yet.

Then Dunlap took over.

Good questions, but getting good answers?

He was demonstrably upset that the item was on the Consent Calendar in the first place, and noted, correctly, that the additional money had to come from somewhere else. Dunlap referred to a transfer from the General Fund; that’s not what the staff report said. The staff report referred to a Park Dwelling Fund transfer, as FFFF has noted. It really doesn’t matter. We already saw that next years CIP only identified a few Park Dwelling Fund projects for a total of $250,000. So where is the additional $300,000 coming from, and what is it displacing? Excellent questions.

City Manager Eric Levitt volunteered to answer Dunlap’s questions in “two minutes,” a promise that would almost certainly never have happened in two minutes or with coherency. To his credit, Dunlap smelled a wagon load of bullshit coming down the road, and demanded a continuance.

Advocating better health. For the public.

A few of the usual suspects popped up to demand immediate approval of the Trail to Nowhere© construction contract. Poor Egleth Nuncio, claimed her health had been impaired advocating for the trail and picking up broken glass on the right-of-way, the latter a claim so preposterous that I’m surprised nobody burst out laughing. But maybe it happened during the infamous Skaksia Kennedy photo op.

Put your money in the bucket over there!

But trees, right? Before waddling off in a huff, she promised a vast turn out on May 20th, which should be a fun rehash of uninformed nonsense as her overlord Ahmad Zahra mobilizes another cry-and-cry session from Fullerton Boohoo.

Finally the Council voted 3-2 to continue the item until May 20th meeting. Once again staff misled the Council by implying that a May 20th meeting was needed to secure the bid within the required 60 day window to hold a public bid. No one thought to inquire about that, because the bid took place on April 22, meaning that there’s another whole month after May 20th in which the contractor has to honor his bid. Zahra and Charles voted no, neither giving a rat’s ass about the escalating cost of this boondoggle.

Of course the Friends know that the real reason for the desperation of the May 20th date; it’s because the City is already so far behind in its Trail to Nowhere© project milestone obligations that the completion date is already impossible to make, and that not even the State of California can look the other way forever.

April 19, 2025April 20, 2025About Us

Trail to Nowhere Falls Into Bureaucratic Limbo

by The Fullerton Harpoon16 Comments

Friends will recall that back on March 1st Fullerton Engineer noted how the “90%” drawings of the Trail to Nowhere had been rubberstamped by the Parks Commission in early January. Right now Fullerton is at least 10 months past the State’s grant deadline for completed design, but who cares, right?

My job is to hand out money. Nobody cares what happens to it…

It’s not like Wade Crowfoot – the head of the State Natural Resources Agency that awarded the grant – is paying any attention at all. If he is he obviously has no intention of holding the City to its contractual milestones, spelled out below.

Parenthetically, we also learned from Edgar Rosales that soils testing had been done last August and required minimal remediation. Yay! The only trouble is that the City in its application for the grant lied, claiming the project was “shovel ready” and that testing had been performed. But let’s not let any of this disturb the confident nap of Mr. Crowfoot.

The completed plans were supposed to go to plan check and then final plans to the City Council for approval. That hasn’t happened yet. And the agenda forecast shows nothing about it for May 6th. May 13th is a budget session. The job still has to be bid and awarded. The completion deadline is October, and that includes plant establishment (see schedule, above).

So what gives?

The Dismal Trail does show up on a map in the capital projects “design” phase on the City’s website:

The long and winding road, that leads to nobody’s door…

Here’s the description that goes with the map:

Of course the “planned start date” (not the contractual one) shows a start of seven weeks ago. Oops.

But, hey, wait a minute. The City has just promulgated a draft of its proposed Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) for the next 5 years, and guess what? No trail to be seen.

Next year the City is planning on spending $250,000 of Park Dwelling fees on three projects: $50K on Misc. Maintenance on Park Facilities – a misuse of Park Dwelling Fees, by the way; $100,000 on the Bastanchury Greenbelt; and another $100K on the Valley View Hillcrest Park kiddie playground. There is nothing shown in the out years at all.

There is no mention of the Trail to Nowhere at all. Zip. Nada. How come? I don’t know.

I also notice that the UP Park Reconstruction is shown on the website CIP map.

Starting at the end of August? Oh, c’mon, who’s kidding whom? There’s no mention of this project in the CIP forecast, either.

It looks to me like the Park Dwelling Fees will be tapped out next year. This could be because the gargantuan “Hub” project was granted a delay paying their upfront fees because, well, because who the Hell knows? Ask a City Councilperson when you get a chance.

With Fullerton it’s hard to know what going on because of constant conflicting information between and even from individual departments, out-of-date web pages, and the like.

There’s something cooking here and it doesn’t smell very appetizing.

February 18, 2025February 18, 2025Ahmad Zahra

The Trail to Nowhere. Radio Silence With The Capital

by Mr. Peabody5 Comments

The trouble with the City of Fullerton’s Public Records Act system is that responses are so dilatory, so frequently incomplete, and often so non-responsive, as Friends have seen over the years, it’s hard to know if you can draw any firm conclusions from what are charitably called public records.

Here’s an interesting request made a couple of weeks ago.

The request has elicited a “full release” response, so we may infer, I hope, that it really is full.

Why is this request interesting? Because the obscure State Department of Natural Resources is the grant-giving sugar daddy of the 2.1 million dollar UP Trail fiasco.

I noted back on January 27th that there were problems with the Trail to Nowhere project schedule, namely, that the design and construction milestones were seven and five months late, respectively.

It’s hard to know the exact status of this boondoggle because nobody in City Hall is saying anything about it to the public. I (confidently) assume the final design was never submitted to the State because the City Council never approved it, never released a bid or awarded a contract. Construction has obviously not started. Now there are just eight months left to do it all.

This is where the PRA request comes in. The response just shares a short email string between Fullerton and Natural Resource Department people trying to set up a meeting for a briefing on some water project up north and its impact on MWD cities’ water supply. That’s it. There is nothing about the grant for the so-called UP Trail.

The project showed little promise, but they didn’t care…,

So what is the status? Were the milestones waived by the Natural Resources Department? Has some schedule modification been made? If so there’s no correspondence (at least none shared by the City Clerk) that show it. That’s pretty odd, isn’t it? Is it possible the State isn’t even keeping track of the agreement and the City isn’t bothering to remind them? That strikes a believable chord.

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At this point it seems highly unlikely that the Trail to Nowhere could be completed in time, but maybe hope springs eternal. The State doesn’t seem to care.

Ahmad Zahra and his pal Shana Charles made a big deal about this dumbassery and organized such an annoying Astroturf backing for it, that the previous council majority chickened out and agreed to the mess. They haven’t been talking about it either, even though they already took a victory lap and threw themselves a party.

Let’s hope so.

January 27, 2025January 28, 2025About Us

“Where’s My Trail to Nowhere?”

by Mr. Peabody21 Comments

Poor, disheartened Diane Vena reminded the City Council about the Trail to Nowhere at their last meeting. Poor Diane, a liberal activist, and a member of team Jaramillo, is best known for her suspicious nomination of the phony Republican candidate, Scott Markowitz, in the 2024 4th District election.

It may be a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

Well, thanks, Poor Diane. It’s about time someone mentioned the Trail to Nowhere, even if in passing.

Friends will recall that the Union Pacific Trail project – funded by the State of California Department of Natural Resources – was finally approved by the City Council over a year ago. The conceptual “trail” goes from nowhere to nowhere and was going to cost $2,100,000 to build.

As usual, the idea was cooked up by City staff as a make work project, and was then vigorously supported by the Fullerton Observer Sisters and a few dozen knuckleheads taken in by the ingratiating Astroturfer, Ahmad Zahra.

Anyhow, Poor Diane believes the Trail has been deliberately put on the back burner due to the Council’s desire to first open the Union Pacific Park, more commonly referred to as the Poison Park. This is true – sort of. In August, 2023 the council majority directed City staff to drop or redeploy the grant and re-open the fenced off park. There was no timetable, and apparently no money either, since the empty park site still sits there 18 months later, even though a conceptual plan was drawn.

Poor Diane believes lack of progress on the park is deliberate – a cynical ploy to delay the Trail until the grant money time allowance runs out. This could be true, and I certainly hope it is. Fullerton did renounce the grant in August, 2023 and then backtracked after months of harassment from Zahra’s annoying claque.

The deadline in the grant agreement was October 2025 for completion of the project – including “plant estabishment.” That’s about eight months away. But there are already original milestones that have been missed. Here’s the schedule from the grant agreement:

Final plans were due last June, and construction was supposed to start last August. Has the State granted Fullerton time extensions? If so why doesn’t the public know about it? If not, why hasn’t the State demanded its money back, per the agreement? Good questions, no good answers.

If working drawings have been completed and submitted, the public hasn’t been favored with a glimpse. And you need completed construction drawings to bid a public works project, let alone build it. There’s the hitch. At this point Fullerton would have only eight months to publish plans, receive bids, get a responsive bid, sign contracts and then construct the trail, a project that would turn out to be a lot more complicated and expensive than any of the conveniently departed Parks officials could have imagined.

Why more complicated and expensive? Because of all the toxic water monitoring wells, the need for new water lines, new storm drain systems, and resolution of cross lot drainage issues – none of which are even included in the grant scope of work! It’s a pretty good guess that the cost of construction in the grant application was woefully underestimated. And nobody in City Hall ever admitted the presence of TCEs along the happy trail.

I suppose the City could get down on their knees and sing the blues to the state, asking for more time. Maybe staff already has. Or maybe, just as likely, the Department of Natural Resources and its chief, Wade Crowfoot, don’t even keep track of what happens to their money despite specific performance requirements in the grant agreement. After all, it’s not their money. Remember the $1,000,000 Core and Corridors Specific Plan, paid for by a State “sustainability” grant, that vanished into thin air?

Well, I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on this to see what’s happening. I’d hope that the Council provides an honest appraisal of the status of this hairy boondoggle, but that’s unlikely. So far nobody but FFFF has told a single truth about this fiasco.

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Trail to Nowhere Pests Throw Party

by Mr. Peabody36 Comments

A Friend just forwarded notice that something called South Fullerton Community is holding a “recognition” celebration this Saturday. The cause? Recognizing “community leaders” for succeeding in pestering, insulting and generally annoying Councilmembers Dunlap, Jung, and Whitaker until the latter finally caved in and approved the $1.7 million State grant to build a recreation trail through the middle of the worst industrially blighted, drug-riddled and gang infested strip in Orange County.

Hubris doesn’t seem to be something the South Fullerton Community folk worry about.

Of course this unheard of group was obviously created by and exists solely as a prop for Councilman Ahmad Zahra. Ironically, they won’t be holding their victory party anywhere near the site of the Trail to Nowhere. That would be a bummer for the celebration.

The announcement says that Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk Silva will be there to recognize the achievement, which makes sense because she doesn’t have any. Senator Josh Newman knows better than to bless this disaster-in-waiting by his presence; but maybe Gas Tax Josh doesn’t know better. This is the same guy who passed a regressive tax increase on his constituents the day before he left town for a Caribbean vacation.

And still the problems of the Trail to Nowhere appertain: a fraudulent grant application that omitted mention of contaminated soil and lied about the number of potential users; 10 active testing wells for trichlorethylene on the site; gang graffiti everywhere; homeless encampments; and of the cost of ongoing maintenance that no one has accounted for. Then there is the rosy, 5 year old budget that won’t get the deal done and will require additional money that could be used on other facilities.

Will any of the celebrants care about the true facts of the Trail to Nowhere? They haven’t so far. Will any of them stand up in a couple of years and apologize for the harebrained scheme? Of course not. All the people in charge of this mess know it as a fact that government has no rearview mirror and that mistakes may have been made (passive voice) but:

Not enough money was spent.
The people in charge have retired.
Critical information was withheld by someone, possibly, but it was all a worthy gesture.
It’s not a disaster it’s a victory!!
Hindsight is 20/20.

Of course this being Fullerton the subject probably won’t come up at all, just as no one even bothers asking about the 20 year old embarrassment known as the Union Pacific Park.

I wonder if the party-givers have invited Messrs. Dunlap, Jung and Whitaker to their fete. They deserved to be recognized, too, and maybe even get a certificate of achievement.

February 25, 2024February 25, 2024Ahmad Zahra

The Trail to Nowhere Complaint

by Mr. Peabody67 Comments

As has been predicted, a concerned Fullerton Friend has decided that the dismal Trail to Nowhere was such an insult to California’s taxpayers and to any commonsensical Fullerton resident that he was going to do something about it.

So he wrote a letter to the State of California Natural Resources Agency and addressed it to the Agency’s boss, Mr. Wade Crowfoot. I understand that the letter was sent by registered mail so it may be hard for Mr. Crowfoot to claim he didn’t get it.

Cynics will say that the California bureaucrats at these agencies don’t care how their grants are spent, or in this case, misspent. Their jobs are to dole out the dough without a backward glance. In this case there was no real forward glance either; judging by the initial approval, they swallowed Fullerton’s tale by the proverbial hook, line, and sinker.

Anyway, it’s a good synopsis of the various inaccuracies and falsehoods in Fullerton’s grant application. Here is the text of the letter, forwarded to us by its author:

Mr. Wade Crowfoot
Secretary for Natural Resources
California Natural Resources Agency
715 P. Street, 20th Floor
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Mr. Crowfoot,
I am writing to you as a concerned citizen of the City of Fullerton, to inform you of irregularities in a
Grant Application made by the City of Fullerton to your agency which resulted in the award of a Urban
Greening Grant to build a recreational trail on an abandoned section of the Union Pacific Railroad right-of-way.
This is a 2022 grant for $1,777,200.00, under Grant Agreement U29194-0 which itself was authorized by
Senate Bill 859.
The irregularities in the Grant Application falls into two categories: first, omission of pertinent
information required by the application; second, outright falsehoods about the projected positive
aspects of the project.
The application failed to alert the State that one of the adjacent properties to the proposed trail is
contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), a known carcinogen. The property (311 South Highland
Avenue) is identified by the EPA and the State of California Department of Toxic Substances Control
(DTSC). Reports have indicated a TCE plume emanating from 311 South Highland in a southerly direction, precisely under the proposed trail site. There are currently 10 Monitoring test wells along the proposed trail site and several others in adjacent properties.
The proposed project budget does not include any cost for additional testing, remediation, and/or
export. There is no inclusion of the need to rework or replace the existing test wells.
Beyond the unmitigated environmental concerns, the City of Fullerton Grant Application asserts
“connectivity” as a positive feature of the proposed trail. These assertions are demonstrably false. The
proposed trail does not connect to any businesses; it does not connect to Downtown Fullerton; it does
not create connections between parks and schools; it does not connect different parts of the City and is
actually contained within the same compact area. In fact, the proposal for Phase II does not even
connect to its predecessor, Phase I, which itself was a selling point in the Grant Application.
In truth, the proposed trail is a disembodied half-mile length of property that starts and stops without
reference to any other transportation corridors.
To the West, Phase II terminates with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe right-of-way at the back corner
of Independence Park, a park so poorly maintained that the playground, courts, and gymnasium have
been closed off to the public for several years. On the East, Phase II abruptly ends at a sidewalk adjacent to Highland Avenue, a North-South thoroughfare serving approximately 11,500 vehicles daily, per the City’s own traffic study in 2019.
Even if Phase II connected to Phase I, which it does not, Phase I itself stops at the back of the abandoned
Union Pacific Park which was closed due to contamination 15 years ago. There is no practical extension
in either direction.
Despite these facts, the City of Fullerton’s Grant Application included a projected 105,000 annual users, a number that is simply preposterous on its face.
The proposed trail does not pass through a residential neighborhood, but rather a blighted industrial
strip situated between two dilapidated, neglected, and run-down parks. In short, it doesn’t go where
anyone with common sense would want to go.
The existing abandoned right-of way has provided plenty of evidence of being unsafe. There is rampant
drug use, homeless encampments and two violent deaths over just the past few years.
The City of Fullerton cannot afford to maintain the proposed facility, as is clearly witnessed in the
condition of the trash strewn, dilapidated, weed-infested Phase I, a condition deliberately omitted from
the grant application. The idea that this area has been so poorly maintained but somehow the City will
be able to be good stewards of the area only AFTER the State grants it nearly $2 million more, is
insulting.
The $1.77 million grant represents resources that could, and should, be used elsewhere.
Fullerton’s Application was disingenuous, at best. At worst it included falsehoods dressed up in words
echoed back from the stated objectives of the Application Form in order to defraud the State.
In writing this I am hoping that your Agency will reevaluate this project, rescind the funding, and find a
better use of this valuable Grant money.
Thank you for consideration of this matter.

February 16, 2024February 17, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Trail to Nowhere Gets Use

by The Fullerton Harpoon49 Comments

The other day FFFF noticed a gentleman who was actually an active bicycle user of the City’s much-vaunted recreation trail through the industrial wasteland of central Fullerton. In fact, this fellow has two bikes!

This poor chap seems harmless enough, but guy’s presence once again raises the several issues regarding the proposed $2,000,000 trail, mostly about safety and maintenance, but also about the homeless problem that has plagued the City’s Union Pacific right-of-way for two decades and actually helped close the dead Union Pacific Park years, and years ago. Potential users, even if there were any identified beyond the insane projection of 105,000 per year, would surely think twice about the neighborhood and the company they would be keeping whilst recreating on the Trail to Nowhere.

No one in City Hall, not staff, and not the incurious City Council who unanimously approved this waste of money, explained why the fate of the UP Park won’t also be visited upon the Trail to Nowhere. The physical conditions still appertain and the existence of the homeless and the Fullerton Toker’s Town gang is as prevalent as ever.

You would think that no one would want their fingerprints on this new disaster-in-waiting, but there seems to be the understanding that in Fullerton all you have to do is wait for a year or two and all past sins will be forgotten if not forgiven. This is called no-fault government, and man, we got it bad.

January 14, 2024January 14, 2024Behind Closed Doors

A Walk on the Wild Side: The Sights and Sounds and Smells of the Trail to Nowhere

by The Fullerton Harpoon41 Comments

So, the other day I decided to take a trip along the Trail to Nowhere, the second phase of a supposed recreation trail that doesn’t even line up with the disastrous failure known as Phase I.

FFFF has shared lots of images of the proposed trail, yet hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of the, er, ahem, colorful neighborhood through which it passes. Well, “neighborhood” isn’t quite the right word to use, because except for a couple of Truslow Avenue house backyards it is bordered on both sides by land zoned for industry with all of the sorts of uses, legal and non-permitted, one might expect.

Of course we’ve read all about the ill-designed and ill-conceived Phase I, ballyhooed by City staff as the predecessor that makes Phase II inevitable. Well, plausible, anyway. Phase I is a repository of graffiti, garbage, and occasional residents. The start of this alleged trail is on the old UP bridge over Harbor Boulevard. FFFF readers may remember this site as the nocturnal murder of a gentleman.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure…

The complete lack of maintenance on Phase I ought to have been a warning to our City Council. But it hasn’t even been noticed. The pungent smell of human urine permeates the weeds behind the Elephant Packing House. But, so what? It’s trail-ish.

Phase I’s inauspicious beginning. It gets worse.

The view looking westward from Phase I isn’t promising. Here you see that Phase I doesn’t even line up with the proposed Phase II corridor; and the slope of Highland Avenue as it dips down to its railroad underpass makes the cross-slope ADA non-compliant.

Crossing Highland (damn, watch out for traffic!), we get to Phase II. FFFF has already shared multiple posts about soils contamination in this location. There are lots of testing wells for carcinogenic Trichlorethylene (TCE), but nobody in City Hall seems to be concerned about moving and exporting, or alternatively, remediating these soils. It certainly isn’t in the project budget submitted in the grant application to the State.

The folks who frequent the Trail to Nowhere habitually leave evidence of their presence.

Further west we get a glimpse back eastward of the long, blank backsides of old industrial buildings, a view not likely to cause cries of elation among the brainwashed green grass/blue skies crowd.

Across Richman Ave in our westward trek is where things really get fun. Razor wire seems to be the decoration of choice among the junkyards in this segment of the Trail to Nowhere.

Small auto/tire use is prevalent along the trail, of course. And more backsides of buildings.

As we press onward we see the view of more businesses that we would enjoy if we were recreating on the trail.

There’s a metal coating business along the route, and even an asphalt plant! The odors are unmistakable, and the industrial education value is priceless!

We would be remiss if, at this point, we didn’t pause to pay our respects to Emmanuel Perez, fate still unknown.

A bit later we come across a long masonry wall on which some talented young urban artists have left their mark for aesthetic posterity.

The final four or five hundred yards of our journey run parallel to the Burlington Northern/ Santa Fe main line tracks that run about 50 feet away, and about 3 feet higher than the “walking and bike” trail. I leave it to each reader to judge the propriety of this strip as a positive recreational opportunity. But see below for the “sound” part of the program.

Over there is run and play and enjoy… (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)

Now, finally, we arrive at our all-important destination. The back corner of an empty Independence Park parking lot. This is a park you might want to go to if you lived in this part of Fullerton; but really, what soft-headed urban adventurer would choose this route?

Finally I offer a sample of the auditory delights awaiting the hopeful recreation enthusiast on the Trail to Nowhere – apart from the sounds of auto repair, metal work, spray painting and tire changing. The BNSF mainline freight trains rumble alongside our trail, and are not shy in expressing their presence. You can barely hear yourself think. These trains are often a mile long.

Now Gentle Friends, my photo essay is over, and my duty to show Fullertonions the ambiance adjacent to the proposed Trail to Nowhere is fulfilled. Most people, when asked, would say an old railroad right-of-way conversion to a rec trail is good, because it is good – in principle. But folks perusing these images would be well-advised to traverse the strip themselves, perhaps with police escort; and, after enjoying the sights and sounds and smells, consider whether or not the Trail to Nowhere should be redeveloped with the area, in a thoughtful broader plan, instead of the way it proposed now; and, whether the State grant money might be better spent elsewhere.