Our Road Trips

8/5/2016 7/29-8/4/2016

Our ride to San Diego went well. We went west on I-10, than a piece of 60 to Riverside and south on I-215 to I-15 and on into San Diego. The city never stops...we think So. Cal is one big city. But we followed our trusty GPS and got to our campground without too much trouble. We are at Sweetwater Regional Park in Bonita for 13 nights. We were going to spend 6 nights at Silver Strand State Beach Campground, but after a survey of the park, its crazy rule of locking the gate at 9 at night and the size of the sites compared to where we are, we made an adjustment to our plans and decided to extend our stay at Sweetwater and just stay here. So we are here for almost 2 weeks, which ought to be ample time to check out the area. We took a drive to the grocery store and it is only 5 miles, we will be fine right here. We are expecting our friend Patti Grant from Newnan, GA next Sat (8/6) for 5 days, she has never been to San Diego and Barb has not either, so we will be exploring together, and then we will be on to Anaheim. It ought to be a great time.

On Saturday, we drove to the Border Field State Park where the most SW corner of the US is located. It is a lonely spot. The fence on the US side is about 50' from the Mexican border, where there is a 30' tall wall. The space in between is called 'no man's land' by the border patrol agents on site. But the Mexican fence extends well into the Pacific, and it seems they are more interested in keeping the Americans out than keeping the Mexicans in. I went & stood as close as the Border Guards would allow to the Mexican border & the Pacific Ocean and Barb took my picture...for what ever it is worth, we have now been at all 4 extremes of the USA since July 2013, been an interesting 3 years. We then drove to Silver Strand and made our decisions for the rest of our stay and then came back to the camper and made the changes. We will be able to stay in the same site for the entire SD stay...nice.

Sunday was a day of rest and planning for the next 10 days. We want to stay away on Sundays when everyone is on the roads. It was a nice relaxing day, something both of us needed. I made an appointment online to get the car looked at, it has run warm at times and we certainly don't want anything to happen to the car, we depend too much on it.

Monday morning we took advantage of being on the left coast, means events on the east coast start early here. The NASCAR race started at 830 am, so we watched the race and then went riding & exploring. We drove up to La Jolla (Lahoyah) and scouted out the town, beaches & the rest of the area. It is very pretty up there, but there are also a LOT of people. We walked along the beach and watched people, like being at Disney, except it is a lot prettier. We then drove to the north, trying to find a Camping World to make a return...got there at 555 but the doors were already locked (said open until 6 right on the door...guess not). So we headed back south, hoping to see the sunset from Point Loma west of the SD airport...couldn't get in there either. So we made our way back to the camper and had grilled hot dogs & brats for dinner...been a fun day (with some minor issues).

Tuesday, we were off early for our 9 am appointment for the car. We sat there until almost 2 and they reported they could find nothing to fix, which was good news. We went to pay the bill and found there was no bill...nice. So we can have confidence that our car is behaving well, very nice to know. From there, we got some lunch and then drove back to Point Loma. It was a beautiful day, and not too crowded, so we spent the next 2 hours exploring all there was to see. At 5, they were asking everyone to leave, so we made our way down off the mountain and into the 500 traffic in downtown SD. It took us almost about 45 mins to go about 7 miles, but we arrived at Petco Park about 45 mins before the game started. We got out of the car and there was a golf cart waiting on us to transport us to the stadium...nice! We had bought the tickets while in Arizona, so we didn't know exactly how good they were....just behind 1st base, decent. The Milwaukee Brewers were in town for the second of 3 games and they won 3-2. Not a very exciting game, but we enjoyed the game, the people watching, and the beautiful evening. We got home about 1130, been another exciting day.

We took a day and just got some stuff done, Parts to replace cables on the house batteries, tools to do that job, got a haircut, groceries, sightseeing this corner of San Diego. Then it was back to the camper to fix the cables and then grill a steak for dinner. After dinner, it was research time for the days ahead...lots to do in the next week.

When we drove to San Diego for the Bonnie Raitt concert, our GPS took us on an unexpected route through the mountains on the way back to Palm Desert. Unfortunately, it was dark so we missed the scenery so we decided to retrace the route and see what we had missed. Turns out we missed quite a bit, including about 200 tin sculptures, 36 wineries in the Temucula area, and a very cool overlook from about 1500' above Palm Desert. So we drove to the overlook and back, stopped at a winery and then drove to Ocean Beach just north of Point Loma and spent a couple hours watching people & enjoying the evening overlooking the beach and all the surfers & the fisherman on the nearby pier.

Steve & Barb Larson