Thanks for the suggestions! I ended up doing a modified version of Stage 1. Different Start/End took a bit of a different route at the start. Had to backtrack on Old Julian Highway and detour onto the 78 because the SD County sheriffs had a HARD road closure that was not expected to clear for 4-5 hours. Not sure what was going on, the guy I saw was decked out and had his hand on his pistol almost the whole time... I also went all the way up to the observatory, or to the gate at least since it was temporarily closed
Good ride overall! I can see the concern about the 78, it wasn't too bad overall. I left really early, so there wasn't that much traffic. And was definitely not that bad compared to the traffic I saw on the 330 for Ride Around the Bear this year!
Ended up being 122 miles, 10686 elevation