Our Road Trips

8/14/2016 8/5-13/2016

We spent Friday (8/5) getting this blog caught up and getting ready for Patti Grant's visit. We took it easy that night, knowing the next 6 days would be pretty busy, and we are glad we did. Barb is such a thorough book keeper too, and that takes some time to do, so we were ready for more of San Diego.

Sat morning, we took off to see the rural part of northern San Diego County. We followed 67 to Ramona, stopped & got some lunch, and then followed a scenic road to Julian. We bought an apple pie, and headed back west. We took the road to the top of Palomar Mtn and went to the Observatory but the tours were already booked. We drove through the State Park up on the mountain, stopped at the lookout point, and then moved on back down the mountain. We made our way to Oceanside and then followed the coast to La Jolla and then took I-5 the rest of the way to San Diego. We stopped by the airport & picked up Patti and went back to the camper. We had a nice drive through the hilly San Diego County, pretty much have covered a big portion of it. We sat out and watched the sunset & the planes flying into San Diego airport & did some catching up...been a while. Nice day!!

Sunday, lots of folks out. We took part of what is advertised as a 59 mile scenic drive. We started at the Info Center on Harbor Drive after a drive by the Silver Strand State Beach so we could show Patti the reason we were not going to move there...she understood. We ended up in La Jolla (about 1/2 of the drive), but we saw a lot of cool spots. That much of the drive took over 8 hours. We will see a lot of the rest tomorrow. We were all ready to not be in the car any more today.

Monday, we drove to Old Town San Diego and took a Hop-on Hop-off trolley tour of San Diego, actually took the trip twice. Lots to see on this tour, all the way to Hotel Del Coronado, most of San Diego except Point Loma, which we had already seen twice.. We got as much sightseeing in one day as possible...good tour. Balboa Park would be a full day all by itself, maybe several days

On Tuesday, we took the 2 hour Flagship Harbor Cruise, well worth the cost. I filled up the chip in the camera on this trip, so when we got off, it was a matter of locating a drug store with photo supplies. I struck out at 2 places before I found one. Then we went to walk around Hotel Coronado. It is a very old place and still has the same location...since 1888. They must spend a fortune keeping that old of a building with that many people moving around in that nice a shape...saw a t-shirt for $55, $30 of which goes for maintenance? And 2 beers and a margarita for $50? Well, you get the idea. But it was a fun visit, and knowing what would be involved in building it today makes my head spin thinking how they got Chinese labor to build it 128 years ago. And installing electricity in that building back then had to be interesting, being no one had installed power in an outhouse, let alone a building of this magnitude in those days...but I also understand that a very small fraction of the folks who visit the place think like I do, so I usually just keep it to myself or drive Barb nuts with it :).

Wednesday, we spent the day at the San Diego Zoo. I am not a big fan of looking at animals in cages or pens, but I took the kids to the zoo now & then when they were little. The San Diego Zoo is very large and the animals look like they are taken pretty good care of, from what I could tell. We took a bus ride, a tram ride, a lot of walking and saw a lot of animals for $50 each, so take that for whatever you like. We had an OK day, Barb got to see Pandas and we all got to see gorillas & other rare sights.

So this morning, we got up early, got Patti to the airport and she was on her way back to Georgia. We went back to the camper and packed it up after our 14 nights in San Diego and made the almost 3 hour drive north to Anaheim, We are in a commercial park just across I-5 from Disneyland. They promised us we could watch the Disney fireworks from our site, we shall see. We are going to just relax and enjoy the evening, we have been going pretty hard. We will be in the LA area for 19 nights at 3 different campgrounds. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in San Diego and will certainly go back if the opportunity presents itself. It is a pretty city and the climate is amazing compared to what we had been experiencing for the prior 6 weeks.

We left the camper about noon and drove to Yorba Linda and stopped at the Richard Nixon Library & Birth place. Most of the library & museum is closed for renovations, but they gave us a tour of the East Room replica and the house Richard Nixon was born in and where he lived until he was 7. Then, like later in life, there was a big gap of information, way more than 18 mins. There was also a movie that made no mention of him resigning as President...funny how that works. They were getting ready to host a large wedding in the East room replica, made me amazed that Nixon has come so far since August 9, 1974, that people are willing to start their married life celebrating at the Nixon Library. I am not trying to criticize, just making an observation.

From there, we got involved in a huge traffic jam on the way across Yorba Linda and a visit to the John Force Racing shop & museum. 17 time Funny Car Champ makes for a lot of history, over 120 winning trophies, lots of cool cars on display, and plaques all over the walls. The shop is small but their main shop is in Indiana, this is where he began his career. We bought a couple t-shirts and said thanks, $4.50 to go through a Presidential Library & $5 to tour one of the NHRAs best driver's museum made for a fun couple of hours. We were the only ones there other than the 3 employees.

Then, we drove the 18 or so miles to the campground in San Dimas we have reserved when we leave Dockweiler Beach on Aug 26. It was full, since this is the last weekend before California kids go back to school. But we got a handle on where it is and what it is like, on the water again...surprise, surprise. We found a straight shot route back to Anaheim (CA 57) and stopped at 2 craft beer breweries and joined in on the Friday evening fun at a couple of unique spots. We arrived back at the camper in time to see the fireworks at Disney, very cool way to end our day, sitting on a lawn chair next to our camper watching fireworks...it has been a very fun Friday.

We spent yesterday working on this blog and other stuff until about noon. Then we drove the couple of blocks to Downtown Disney and went to ESPN Zone and had a sandwich for lunch. Afterwards, we drove the jaunt we will make when we move on Monday to check out our route and see what we will have for a site...it will be fine. Then we drove home a different way and got home in time to watch the fireworks again. Tomorrow, we are going on a tour of LA, let someone else drive for a change. Not that we are getting tired of driving, but it is good to let someone show us around.

Steve & Barb Larson