San Diego: Balboa Park and Mission Gorge hiking

We’ve done a lot since I last posted.  Instead of an hour-by-hour/day-by-day recap, here are a couple of highlights:

Balboa Park:  Wikipedia calls San Diego’s Balboa Park an “urban cultural park” and that’s a good description.  A huge area within San diego’s city limits, it includes the San Diego Zoo and 15 (!) museums plus restaurants, theaters, hiking trails, formal gardens, wild vegetation, beautiful architecture, a carousel, pavilions and on and on.  That place is enormous.  Named for the Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the park was the location of the 1915 Panama California Exposition (which celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal) and the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition (held to promote California and help the local economy during the Depression).

I wanted to go to see an exhibit on chocolate at the Natural History Museum -- but by the time Jim and I put in several miles just wandering the grounds, I was no longer up for it.  Another exhibit that seemed to be drawing a lot of takers was “Instruments of Torture” at the Museum of Man.  Ixnay on that one for me.

Hiking in Mission Gorge: Yesterday we hiked at Mission Trails Regional Park, just a few miles from our campground.  The area was originally the home of the Kumeyaay Indians.  Later it was the site of the Old Mission Dam, built to store water for an early Catholic mission.

Close up of architectural details at the Casa
del Prado, one of the buildings in Balboa
Park.

Architectural details of Balboa Parks Museum of Man, an anthropology museum.

Part of the remains of the Old Mission Dam.

Bev and a coast live oak at the Mission Trails Park.  The evergreen oak can be shrubby or -- like this one -- huge and gnarled in a way that makes it grow horizontally.

Jim and Cooper and some park scenery. 

A heron near the Old Mission Dam at Mission Trails Park.

And, because we all need some alone time every now and then:  Cooper in “time out” after getting  grumpy in the rig.  He’s between the driver and passenger seats, blocked in by our trash can and our recycling bag.  

Old Town San Diego and the beach

San Diego’s “Old Town” was settled in 1769 and was California's first permanent Spanish settlement. Considered the birthplace of California, Old Town was thriving in the mid 1800s.  But then it had a string of bad luck that included an earthquake, floods, fires and a small pox out break.  So San Diego's downtown was moved a few miles south, where it still is today.  
 
In 1968 the state of California established Old Town State Historic Park to preserve the buildings and heritage that characterized San Diego from about 1820 to 1870.  On Thursday, we visited Old Town where we walked, browsed, bought some olive oil (and did an olive oil tasting -- the first time we’ve ever done that), ate fudge (why is it that fudge stores are in every tourist area everywhere?) and had lunch.

Afterwards we went to San Diego’s Navy exchange and commissary.  The exchange is the military’s version of a department store; the commissary is the grocery store.  I did some Christmas shopping; now I have to figure out where to stash stuff in the rig. I don’t need to hide gifts -- I just need to put them somewhere where they won’t get walked on.

On the way home we took a wrong turn and ended up going back on Naval Base San Diego via a different gate.  Cooper went Cujo at the gate guard who checked our military IDs, which got us stopped.  Seems dogs are not allowed on that part of the base.  The guy with the gun was very nice once he found out our goal was to turn around and find the freeway. 

Yesterday we went to Pacific Beach, which is north of Ocean Beach (where we went Wednesday) and has a very nice boardwalk plus beaches for walking and people watching.  So we did just that.

Today, I think, is going to be a football-watching/cleaning/reading/laundry/make-a-pot-roast-stay-close-to-the-rig day. 

Jim with a poster advertising a beer he tried at the Coyote Cafe in Old Town.  It had a little too much of a peppery kick for him. I tried it and it made my throat burn.

Bev in front of some Old Town San Diego greenery.

Jim says he does not want to live where they do traffic reports on Saturdays. So that crosses San Diego off our "lets buy a house here" list.  That and probably housing prices.  Also, is California the only place that refers to its freeways as “the freeway number," as in "the 8” or “the 5”?

I was on a Pacific Beach pier when I took this photo of a surfer catching a wave.

Jim took this wide shot from about the same spot. The pier we were on actually had vacation homes on it.

My Sailor Boy

Jim began his military service in January 1968 at the Naval Training Center in San Diego.  He hadn’t been back since he completed his training, so today we took a trip down that military memory lane. 

The NTC opened in 1923 and provided sailors basic and advanced training.  The base reached a peak population of 40,000 sailors during he Korean War; during Vietnam as many as 18,000 recruits were there at a time.  In 1997 the NTC was closed and given to the city of San Diego.  Today it’s a mixed-use community of homes, shops, restaurants, cultural centers, and military museums/displays.

After visiting the NTC we went to “Dog Beach” in the town of Ocean Beach.  Dog Beach is exactly what it sounds like. Then we had lunch in “OB” as it’s called and wandered the shops.

Jim, Cooper and an employee of the NTC Foundation in front of the former NTC command center/now NTC Foundation HQ and NTC museum. The gracious employee told us about how the NTC was being used today, and pointed out an Admiral James Stockdale Museum inside this building.  Admiral Stockdale was last known for a couple of odd statements during the 1992 vice presidential debate (he was Ross Perot's running mate and said  "Who am I? Why am I here?" as his opening statement; later he asked for a question to be repeated because he had his hearing aid turned down).   But Stockdale was one of the most highly decorated officers in  the history of the Navy and the highest-ranking naval officer ever held as a POW in Vietnam.  He was a  POW for 7 years.

Jim in front of another beautiful NTC buildings. The NTC is on the Register of Historic Places.  Building are in the Mission Revival Style which features courtyards, arches and clay tile roofs. Jim does not remember the buildings being quite this nice.

The back view of the NTC Command Center. Jim was at the NTC for nine months until he got orders to go to Guam.  He said he had to go to the library and look up where (and what) Guam was.  He was hoping for Hawaii, but at least it wasn’t Vietnam.

Jim and Cooper looking at the "52 Boats Memorial" at the NTC, which honors 52 submarines lost in World War II and the 3505 sailors aboard who died.

Cooper makes friends at Dog Beach in the Ocean Beach District of San Diego.

Cooper ignoring Jim's commands to come. 

Bev eating fish tacos at the Sunshine Cafe in Ocean Beach.

We're in San Diego

Yesterday we were still in Yuma, AZ.  I wanted to take a tour of a date farm, but the tours weren't running.  So I took a photo of the date trees and had a date milk shake. I'm a lover of all things ice cream, but it was not the best shake I ever had.  Didn't keep me from eating the entire thing, however.

This morning we took off for San Diego, which is about 170 miles due west of Yuma.  In the first 50 miles on Interstate 8 -- and in very southern part of California we -- saw sand dunes...

Then irrigated farmland...

Then miles and miles of piles and piles of rocks. Note the tiny, red car on the road which give you an idea of how big the rock piles are.

We were stopped at two border patrol check points on I-8.  While we waited at this one I took photos of a car being inspected.  The border agents seemed very interested in what was underneath it.  At the first stop we were asked if we had any "fruit, vegetables or animals."  We didn't claim the six bananas in our sink, but we did claim the dog. 

Above is what happens when I go out to unhook the tow car, leave an unfolded map on the passenger seat of the rig, and Cooper decides keep my seat warm. Or maybe he just doesn't like California.

Our camp site at Admiral Baker Field in San Diego in a photo that includes Jim helping Cooper into the back of our car.   The campground is associated with the San Diego Naval Station but not on a military base. Our camp site backs up to a golf course.  

Our Veterans' Day

There’s a big display of military vehicles and equipment on the road to the Yuma Proving Ground entrance gate.  We’ve been meaning to stop and take a look, and decided to do that on Veteran’s Day.  It was a sampling of missiles, tanks, launchers and other equipment all tested at the Yuma Proving Ground.

Then we drove in to Yuma and walked around the historic downtown area. It’s near the Colorado River; a 1916 flood pretty much melted all the then-adobe buildings.  Now historic downtown has a large art center, some second hand shops, a book store, pottery shops, courtyards, sidewalk patios, and lots of restaurants, but unfortunately also many of empty stores.

We had lunch downtown at a place called “The Pint House” where our waitress kept explaining the problems she was having learning her job (Can I see how that’s written on the menu because if I don’t write it down exactly, the cook will yell at me; I just turned 21 so I don’t know anything about the beer). If we’d been in a hurry it might have been a problem, but she was cutely inept.  She'll learn.  And the food was good. 

Back at the Yuma Proving Grounds campground, we met new neighbors from Vancouver, Washington.  We see a lot of Washington State license plates here plus Canadian ones -- a tourist brochure we saw claims about 700,000 Canadians spend the winter in Yuma.

Bev uncomfortably posing in front of a missile launcher not far from the main gate to the Yuma Proving Ground.  Camp Laguna -- now the Yuma Proving Ground -- was the first of several Arizona desert training centers established during World War II.

A wider shot of the equipment display.  In the center is a Sherman tank, aka "Ol War Horse."

This field of kale was right along US 95 on the way into Yuma.   Besides kale we saw red and green leaf lettuce and lots of baled cotton.

This former post office in historic downtown Yuma was built in 1933. It's one of the larger buildings in that part of town. 

A fountain and desert garden grace a traffic roundabout in downtown historic Yuma. The 1950s was the most thriving time for downtown, but then like with many places, shopping moves to the outskirts.  The current  big shopping area is the Yuma Palms Regional Center just of I-8; it has all the usual mall stores along with a Sam’s Club.