We stayed in San Diego for another week. We went back to
Mission Beach and walked the Boardwalk from Pacific Beach
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| Pacific Beach Pier |
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| Vacation homes behind Pacific Beach |
down past the roller
coaster
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| Roller Coaster in Belmont Park |
and wave surf pool in Belmont Park. The condos and home are incredible.
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| Some are modern, |
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| Some are more rustic-looking |
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| Some have many units |
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| Some are single family homes |
The surf pool is amazing. It was about 10 yds wide
and 10 ft high, with a steep slope. One large wave is generated. Riders start
at the left, the beginning of the wave, and surf along it, as long as they can
stay standing. Some were even doing turns. They basically stay pretty much in
one place, unless they get sucked into the curl and wipe out.
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| Looking back at Mission Beach |
We went back to Balboa Park, driving this time since parking is free, and went
through the Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Man’s Instruments of Torture exhibit and their
larger museum
with Mayan, Beerology, Mummies of Ancient Egypt, Mexico and Peru,
and Footsteps Through Time- 4 million
years of human development revealed through scientific discoveries. The Instruments of Torture
display was really gruesome, Thumbscrews, Skull-Splitters, Iron Maiden and
Chastity belts were monstrosities of metal. It is hard to imagine men
developing these horrific methods of torturing another human. The Mayan exhibit
centred around Stellae and their interpretations, and artifacts from the
ancient Mayan civilization. Beerology was a fascinating history of Beer-making,
and types of beers. To our surprise, we learned that Sake, Japanese rice wine,
is actually a beer. The Museum
Of Natural History has excellent displays with dinosaurs, fossils and geology of the San Diego
area.
John went cycling with our neighbour Dave. They took the
trolley from Santee, then the ferry to Coronado, and cycled around Coronado, and down as far as
Imperial City. They took a break to enjoy a beer on the patio of the Hotel Del Coronado. They picked up the trolley in Imperial Beach back to Santee. They were both rather sore!! Kathy and I stayed
home. She walked the dogs. I did a couple of loads of washing, took some more pictures of Santee Lakes,
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| To the East of the Lakes |
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| Trailers by the Lake 7 |
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| Floating Cabins |
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| Picturesque Lake 7- to canoe or paddle |
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| The ducks all come running, most are American Coots |
read for a
while, then began the task of sorting through all the pamphlets and information
I had collected so far, to see what I wanted to use in our scrapbook. I was
making chili for dinner, and when Kathy and I were talking and she had nothing
planned, I invited them over too, and just doubled the amount! We spent an
enjoyable evening swapping travel stories and getting to know our neighbours
better.
John and I took a drive to Coronado over the bridge on
hwy 75. We parked and wandered around the downtown area.
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| A main street |
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| A Bank, part of a block-long building |
It is a beautiful city
on what was once an island. There are many interesting shops, boutiques, and
restaurants. We shared a delicious hamburger, and then had lattes at a little
table outside a bookshop. Then we walked
to “The Del”
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| The front of the Hotel del Coronado |
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| The back of the Hotel Del Coronado, the Dragon Tree on the right |
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| The Dragon Tree Story |
to relax on the patio over-looking the ocean.
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| Total relaxation... |
The hotel, built in
1888, is spectacular. It is one of the grand old wooden resort hotels with an
atmosphere of opulence and wealth. I felt so decadent, drinking a Margarita,
watching the ocean and folks wandering the beach. It was quite windy; however,
the patio is protected by a plexiglass wall, so we basked in the sun.
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| Coronado Beach |
On the way home, we drove down towards Imperial City.
There is an RV Resort, Silver Strand State Beach Campground, right on the
ocean. We decided to look at it for a future trip. However, although it is
right on a beautiful sandy beach, it has only electric hook-up, cold showers, is
like a huge parking lot, with many quite small sites close together, and is
expensive at $65 per night. In addition, the gate is locked at 7pm, and if you
are out later, you have to park across the highway and walk back to your RV. We are rarely back by 7pm, so we would be doing a lot of walking.
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| Islands of Mexico seen from Imperial Beach |
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| But sunsets are fabulous |
On the weekend before we left, we spent most of Saturday in
Oceanside visiting with our friend Pete, and his lab Bella, on his boat. John
really misses having a dog, and he and Bella were inseparable.
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| John and Bella |
[No, we will not
be getting another dog until we decide to stop full-timing.] We had an early Valentines dinner at Karl
Strauss in Carlsbad, so I could try, [and John could enjoy again] their Cioppino.
It is a spicy bouillabaisse-type dish with a variety of seafood, and is really delicious! We have several recipes to try. Sunday we spent most of
the day getting the Airstream ready to travel once again. Having been a month in one
place, many things had crept out of their “travelling homes” and had to be
repacked. We went for dinner with our new friends, Kathy and Dave, to a favourite
restaurant of theirs in Imperial Beach, for a delicious Prime Rib dinner.
Sadly, it was time to leave Santee Lakes, and move on. We
were supposed to be out of the site by noon; however, all our neighbours
stopped over to talk, even Tucker and Charlie. We headed to Arizona via I-8. There
were 4 mountain summits or passes
as we didn’t actually go over a mountain top.
In general, the landscape was much greener,
probably due to the recent rains.
There were still huge boulders on the mountain slopes.
Once over the mountains,
we were back into desert- dry, flat and hot.
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| Dunes by a rest stop |
That is, until we reached El Centro
in the Imperial Valley. Here we found huge emerald green fields,which we think might be alfafa,
many with
sprayers and irrigation pipes along the fields.
There were huge bales and even a feed lot.
We exited at Yuma looking for Paradise
Casino signs, but couldn’t find them and
had to use the GPS to find the site where we planned to stay for the night. They have a huge dirt and gravel lot for RV’s.
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| Paradise Casino, parking for RVs |
There are no
services, but it seemed that many folks were set up there for longer than just one
night, with generators and TV dishes set up. There are 7 or 8 wide lanes separated by a small berm. RV’s park on both
sides of these lanes, with plenty of room in between. There must have been 30 or
40 RV’s in the lot. We had dinner in the Casino restaurant, then noticed that
the Olympics were being shown on the TV over the bar. We ended up ordering
several drinks and watching Olympics until 10 pm.
Next day, after our $2.99 breakfast, we were off again. It was a scenic drive,
through valleys and barren mountains, with just a lot of cacti, not even scrub
trees. Dome Valley was very flat. Further on there were saguaros [
Sah-WAH-rows], green bushes and green shrub trees. Saguaros only grow in the Sonoran Desert, in southern Arizona, with a few on the California border.
The desert here has very
interesting geology, basalt volcanic flows and lava volcanic flows in the same area.
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| Basalt mountain |
Our destination was a BLM site, Painted Rock Petroglyph Campground north of I-8.
It is in the desert, boondockers only – no services, just propane and our solar
panel, by a huge pile of rocks and boulders with interesting Petroglyphs.
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| A Pile of Petroglyphs |
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| A field of petroglyphs |
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| Individual petroglyph rocks |
The desert
here was quite fascinating as it had a green haze,
which we later discovered was
many small grass-like plants with 2 or 3 leaves each. There were also large
clumps of bright yellow flowers, bushes with small yellow flowers,
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| The flowers in the forefront are on a Brittle bush, and those to the right are a Creosote Bush |
small white,
yellow, orange and purple flowers.
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| Tiny purple flowers |
The barrel cacti had yellow fruit, just
starting to come out.
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| The best Barrel Cactus we saw. |
The park is beautiful. Sites are well spaced and each is
marked out with rows of small rocks, and has a concrete picnic table and a fire
ring.
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| Morning coffee outside |
Sites were so large, we were able to pull the trailer in, unhitch, and
pull the truck forward to pull out of the site.
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| Our site |
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| Sunsets were amazing every night |
We walked around the
petroglyphs, and talked to a couple who are members of the Escapees. They have
a site in a co-op SKP park in Benson AZ. They get a discount at many coop SKP,
Rainbow and other parks in the US and some in Canada. It is possible to stay in
a site at one of these parks for a very reasonable rate. This is certainly something
we will look into.
Next day we drove through back roads to get a better look at
the mountains, to look for a memorial and the site of a massacre of a pioneer family,
and to look at a dam on the Gila River. All we saw were some excellent views of
the mountains with clumps of beautiful yellow flowers on their slopes,
basalt
fields,
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| Basalt field [I was even allowed to pick up 2 rocks!] |
a roadrunner sitting on a post,
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| A sitting Roadrunner, but we saw him running too |
lots of saguaros,
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| The perfect saguaro |
and we got lots of fine silt all over
the outside and inside of the truck. We couldn’t find the site, and the road to
the dam was closed.
This was the perfect test for the new Lifeline AGM batteries we had installed in Corona, CA. They worked beautifully. In the morning, with the furnace on for part of every night, and using the stove, frig and hot water heater, the batteries were at 80-% - 85% in the morning and back to 100% by 10am.
On the way back to I-8, as we were leaving, we came across some interesting sights.
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| A paddle wheel to monitor the flow of irrigation water |
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| Part of a road flooded out IN THE DESERT |
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| The Solana Solar Generating Project. |
Our next stop was Picacho Peak State Park on I-10.
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| A field of saguaros and more green than I-8 desert |
We choose the area we want to visit, then look
for interesting National, State or County Parks. This unique park offers interesting
trails that wind up to the peak, and is relatively close to Tucson. Picacho
Peak is a 1500-foot uniquely-shaped mountain
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| Picacho Mountain- campsites at the base, in the centre [white dots] |
that rises out of the desert and
has been used as a landmark by travellers since prehistoric times. It is made
up of faulted, tilted and eroded remnants of a sequence of lava flows. Originally it was part of the mountain across the highway. However, when the Sea of Cortez was formed, as the land was "stretched" this mountain range 'broke apart', and Picacho Peak was separated from the main mountain. [This is really an elementary, layman's plate tectonics explanation that we were given.] In the daytime
looking down on the I-10, you see a line of ‘toy’ cars and trucks,
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| From the Airstream - the little white boxes are Semis on the I-10 |
in the
evening, a ribbon of light.
Looking across the highway at sunset, the original mountain is beautiful.
Sites are level, large, and landscaped with a Paloverde
tree [the bark is green so they can photosynthesize even without leaves] or Saguaro cactus, and a picnic table off to one side or behind the RV.
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| Our site- 2 Paloverde trees |
We have been able to get a variety of TV stations using the antenna, so we've watched NBC Olympics each night .We are staying here a few more days [so more on Tucson soon], and then moving to Lake Pleasant Regional Park, closer to Phoenix, before we move on to Sedona.
