When we left Williams on our way to Yuma, we avoided the awesome twisting (but definitely not RV friendly) road to Sedona, but we still picked a scenic route rather than the boring interstate. This proved to be more excitement than we expected when we suddenly spotted a sign indicating that vehicles more than 40 feet long were prohibited (the trailer itself is almost 43' and when towing we are close to 55’). Bill screeched to a stop on the narrow shoulder of the two-lane road, and then had a minor meltdown (this might be a bit of an exaggeration. I carefully and safely pulled off to the side of the road and expressed some concern with our current situation). Clearly we could not go forward and turning around was not going to be possible either. After debating options and searching Google maps for a suitable turnaround point we got lucky. A passing couple recognized our predicament and stopped to tell us we would be able to turn around a short distance down the road and they suggested an alternative route to get us down out of the mountains. The turn around proved to be challenging, but Bill managed. The alternate route added nearly an hour to our drive and had its own worrisome curves and steep grades. (Even though it is a more enjoyable drive, there are 3 other problems with getting off the interstate. Dessa already talked about my reaction to an unexpected tunnel but I am also afraid of coming across a bridge with insufficient clearance for our 13.5’ high trailer. That height and our length also make getting in and out of a gas station or a restaurant for lunch interesting).

This little detour still led us through some beautiful scenery and when we finally made it down off the mountains, we found a biker bar, the Arrowhead Bar and Grill. There were several bikers already there so we decided to stop for lunch. The ambiance was fun; the food was good and the ice-cold Cider even better. The bikers were talking about the great road out of the mountains so it was tempting to get our motorcycles out and ride back up the twisties but we still had several hours to go to get to Yuma and we were already behind schedule.

Our overnight stop was just outside of Yuma proper, really close to the Mexico border. It was back above 100 degrees and the park was nearly empty but it was right off the highway and cheap. After setting up we headed over to our essentially private pool to cool off and discovered that the park had its own 9-hole executive golf course. Early the next morning, we headed out for some golfing. This was my first time to play on a course, so I was relieved to see there were only two other people playing. It had been a long time since we had even been to the driving range, so it took me a while to get a barely acceptable swing, and we did not keep score. I’m sure I probably had double the par 27 (and maybe a little more than that), but by the end I was enjoying myself and actually had a few really good shots. I headed back to the trailer after 9 holes but Bill stayed and played 3 more rounds (it had been a long time since I had played but I managed a +20 over for 27 holes and so I was pretty happy as well).

The drive from Yuma to San Diego was fairly short, and the temp dropped dramatically as we headed for the coast from the 105 in Yuma to a very pleasant 70. The mountains just before we hit San Diego looked like gigantic boulder size gravel hills – very strange. With some help from Wikipedia, it turns out this stuff is called exposed granodiorite and spheroidal weathering creates these smooth, rounded shape over millions of years. Who knew? (Since none of the pictures that Dessa took from the truck turned out you’ll have to look it up for yourself).

San Diego enjoys sunshine and tropical weather all year long, except it turns out in June when it is mostly cloudy. They call this the June Gloom and it was in fact cloudy most of the time we were here. We stayed at the Chula Vista RV resort which was right on San Diego bay surrounded by a marina, pier and Public Park, with shopping and a theater just minutes away. So far the Wal-Mart’s in California are terrible, not at all like Texas, even though they still call themselves "super". Chula Vista is very nicely landscaped with great facilities, and very expensive at $90 a night… welcome to California. San Diego is a medium sized city so it was a 10-15 minute drive to get just about anywhere in town. After living in Dallas all my life, I have discovered that I really like medium size cities. They have all the amenities without all the traffic and long drives to get where you want to go. Once again, there were too many things to do, we had eleven days and would have needed to stay at least twice as long to put a sufficient dent in our list. I guess we just have to accept that we will not be able to do everything in most cities. We also need to take more time to just relax - something to work on!

When San Diego hosted an Expo in 1916 they created Balboa Park. The buildings now house 17 museums, surrounded by eight gardens. We bought a 7-day pass for $55 each that allowed us to visit all of the museums, and went to the park several times. All of the museums were fairly small and none of them would took more than 90 minutes to see, so we visited about 10 of them. Our favorite was probably the Railroad Museum. It had a half a dozen layouts with over 100 miles of scale track in replicas of the California countryside. Some sections were still being built up so we could see how they were made and all the detail that goes into the design. At the Auto Museum they had Louie Mattar’s Cadillac, famous for non-stop cross-country trips in 1952 (he built it himself for $75k). It is equipped with all the required conveniences like a stove, bar, washing machine, water fountain, phone, TV’s, etc. It also has a platform that allowed him to change a tire without having to stop. The worst museum was probably the Photography museum. It had one tiny room with about 50 pictures, a second dedicated to a series of portraits mimicking old style Victorian portraits and the rest of the museum was made up of various little viewing rooms for video clips on environmental, political or social issues. We were in there for less than 20 minutes. The gardens were very nice and the Botanic House was full of different types of orchids. Prepare for lots of flower pictures.

We decided to go to the San Diego Safari Park rather than the more famous San Diego Zoo (its run by the same people). We both prefer to see the animals in more natural settings even if it means you sometimes can’t see them at all. Besides, cages are not conducive to photography. You would think a safari park would be like Fossil Rim in Glen Rose where you drive through the park, but this was more like a regular zoo. We spent 7 hours walking the park, and since it was about 45 minutes drive away from the ocean, it was nice and sunny. It was beautifully landscaped and very well done. They had all the expected animals and some we had not seen before. We got to watch two Barbary Sheep butting heads, dancing Flamingos, a Serval (a small member of the cat family but the one with the largest ears), and a Cheetah walking on a leash with his dog companion (Cheetah are very skittish and naturally run away at the slightest provocation. The zoo discovered that pairing them with a dog while they are very young teaches them to look to the dog to see if they should be scared and it keeps them much calmer) and racing along on a course. There were lots of birds throughout the park and a small aviary that was pretty cool. I had my camera set on action most of the day, so it takes several shots at once. When I got home, I had 900 photos and Bill had another 400. Brace yourself for lots of animal and bird pictures.

I had mapped out several motorcycle rides, and this time we did not find any dirt roads along our route. It was about 65 degrees when we left the park, so we wore full leathers including chaps. It is so nice to be able to wear the gear without being hot. We rode up into the misty mountains and down into the sunny valleys ending up at Dudley’s Bakery. It is the #1 bakery in San Diego, even though it is in Santa Ysabel, 45 miles away. It was very good and we stocked up on treats. The roads were winding up and down for most of the hundred and forty mile trip. It was really beautiful and so much fun. I was worried, when we decided to buy a toy hauler so we could bring the motorcycles, that we would not ride them very much. In Dallas we only rode once or twice a month because the weather and the roads are just not very good. I am so glad we brought them! This is what riding is all about. It was so great; we repeated the same ride a few days later.

We went to La Jolla to see the seals at Seal Rock. Shocker… more animal pictures. This was very different from the seals that used to be in San Francisco. There were not nearly as many, they have lots of different colored mottled coats, and they are not lying on top of each other. In fact, they actually don’t like to touch each other, so we watched as one poor smaller seal tried and tried to get up on the rock with some of the bigger seals. Every which way he tried he failed because he could not get past without the mean big boys snapping at him. We enjoyed watching them play in the surf, fuss at each other, scratch and swim like bullets. But boy did they ever stink! Besides the seals, the coast was cool with dramatic cuts and caves created by the tides. There were shrimp all over the beach washed up by the tide, and they did not even seem to be trying to get back out to sea. La Jolla is very upscale and we found a great breakfast restaurant so Bill could have some pancakes for lunch (of course they didn’t have real Canadian maple syrup but the pancakes were still good).

Since we were so close to Mexico, I search for the best Mexican food and one of the highest rated was only about five minutes from the RV Park. El Gordo was famous for street tacos, and when we got there we had to park illegally and wait in a long line even though it was a Tuesday. They pretty much only served tacos, fast food style. They were a bit too “street” for me, one bite of fat and I was out! Bill took me to Taco Bell on the way home.

We checked out the Gas Lamp District one evening. It is a sixteen-block area in downtown San Diego with shopping and dining. No gas lamps that we saw. We walked around and had dinner. Nothing special. We rode bicycles over to Coronado Island, connected by a peninsula, where we discovered we had forgotten to bring our lunch money. Hillcrest Farmers Market on Saturday morning was great. We spent about $50 on fruit, dips, jelly, breakfast and cheesecake in a cup. Another day we did our requisite hike, 6 miles up Cowles Mountain. It was a nice area and good to be doing the uphill part at the beginning of the hike. On the way down we finally found a snake. He was already heading off the path but we did get a picture of half of him, the rest being in the bushes. I’m pretty sure we heard rattlesnakes in the bushes along the trail, but we did not hang around waiting for them to show themselves. There were lots of other things we wanted to do, but the days flew by, and it is time to be off to, hopefully, sunny Santa Barbara.


Higher resolution photos are available on Flikr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bill_and_ dessa/sets/