Southern California - Part II

As I said in the previous post, we arrived in San Diego on the 7th of January for a two week stay. For the first couple days we still weren't feeling 100 percent, so we hung around the coach. On the 10th we finally got out for a little sight-seeing and took a drive around Mission Bay, Pacific Beach and out onto Point Loma where we stopped at the Cabrillo National Monument. Interesting place with a lot of information on the early history of the San Diego area. The park is on Point Loma hill so there are some great views of San Diego Bay and the city.

On the 12th we went to Old Town San Diego and spent the afternoon walking around the shops. We have been there several times before, but always enjoy the area. There is a transit station in Old Town and one of our plans had been to take the red trolley down to Tijuana, Mexico. You can ride the train down to San Yisdro for a buck, walk across the border into TJ and then take the train back up for another dollar. However, recent news stories from TJ indicate that there are major drug gang problems including shootings in the streets. We decided we didn't need any Mexican stuff that bad.

On the 13th we ventured out to the Sycuan Casino out in El Cajon. Didn't win anything, but didn't lose a lot either and had a good time. Afterwards we visited the El Cajon Elks Lodge. Very nice and friendly lodge. The lodge has over 2,000 members which makes it huge by most lodge standards.

On the 15th we finally felt well enough to feel comfortable visiting Jackie's brother and mom, both of whom live in San Diego. We stopped at Dennis' condo then went over to the senior center where Jackie's mom lives. Had a very nice visit. For various reasons it has been a while since we had seen her. She looks pretty good for nearly 89 years old. After our visit we went by the San Diego Elks Lodge for a cocktail and visit. Much to our surprise we ran into an old acquaintance from Indio, Jeff Albright. It has been at least four years since we last saw him. He had moved from the Desert up to Oregon, however, he moved back down to San Diego a year or so ago to be with his mom. We had a very nice visit. While we were there we called Barry and Colleen because we had met Jeff through them back in Indio. They were quite surprised to talk to him too.

On the 16th we decided to go on one of our famous "Elks Pub Crawls" and took off for a day of lodge visits. We stopped first at the Santee Lodge and had a nice visit. This is a very friendly lodge - in fact, we weren't sure we were ever going to get out because everyone wanted to buy us a drink. A number of the people at the bar were actually members of the El Cajon Lodge which is only a few miles away. After Santee we went North up to the Poway Lodge. Although this was a much smaller lodge, it too was very friendly and welcoming. For those Elks visiting the San Diego area we have found all of the lodges in the county to be very welcoming to visitors. After hanging out at the Poway Lodge for a while we drove over to the Encinitas Lodge, which was actually in Cardiff. Unfortunately, Wednesday was bingo night and because they allow the public in to play bingo, the bar (a private club) was closed. To add insult to injury, they didn't even have any lodge pins for our collection!

On the 19th we took Jackie's mom over to the Seaport Village for lunch and then out for some shopping. She likes to get out, although she doesn't usually want to stay out too long. On Monday the 21st we packed up and headed east to Winterhaven, just over the border from Yuma, Arizona.

We had a very uneventful trip, although we stopped at the truck stop located on the Indian reservation at the top of coastal divide about 60 miles East of San Diego. It is located at over 4,000 feet and it was COLD! I thought I was going to freeze to death standing outside putting fuel in the coach. We arrived at the Pilot Knob RV park in the early afternoon and got set up pretty quickly. We are only going to be here for five days and came down here primarily to go down to nearby Algadones, Mexico to get our teeth cleaned and get new glasses for Jackie.

After we got set up we drove over to Yuma, AZ, about 8 miles East of the park and visited the Elks Lodge. We wanted to get a copy of the Lodge calendar for the week so we would know what might be going on. We ended up staying for dinner since they had their spaghetti night. All you can eat for six bucks. We don't eat pasta at home much so it had been a while since I had a nice big plate of spaghetti - was quite good.

On Tuesday the 22nd we went down to Algodones. The border crossing is only about three miles from our park. We were able to get our teeth cleaned and get Jackie some new glasses in one day. That is good, because it is a long wait to get back across the border. The walk-across line was about a half mile long and it took us an hour and a half to get to the border. For those not familiar with Algadones, it is a fairly small town on the border which is about 70 percent dentist offices and eye doctors. The remainder is made up of pharmacies, liquor stores and shops with the usual Mexican merchandise. Every day the place fills up with folks going down for dental work and eye glasses. We were there last March and I got new glasses and new dentures for a fraction of the cost in the U.S. and the quality is quite good. They don't want to kill the golden goose I guess.

We will be leaving here on Saturday the 26th to head back up to the Desert. We will be going to Desert Hot Springs to stay in another of our membership parks, the Western Horizon's Desert Pools RV Resort. We'll post again in a couple weeks and let you know what's going on.

We didn't have a lot of pictures for this post, so I thought I would throw in a shot of our kitty, Smokey, curled up with his stuffed buddy.

That's it for now - talk to you soon!

Southern California - Part I

My apologies to any regular viewers of our blog for being so tardy in updating. Its been an interesting month. We left beautiful Casa Grande, Arizona on the 15th of December and headed to Tucson for a brief stay at the Beaudry RV resort. We had an appointment to have some minor work done on the coach at Beardry's service center so we decided to go down a couple days early to explore Tucson. On Sunday we took a drive down to Green Valley, a retirement town about 30 miles south of Tucson and then down to Nogales, the town on the Mexican border. We went to the Elks Lodges in both towns. The Lodge in Green Valley was huge - their membership is over 2,000. The Lodge in Nogales was about 300 yards from the Mexican border in an old grocery store right downtown. Both lodges were pretty friendly.

On Monday we took the coach over to the service center and, of course, were met by one of the sales guys who wanted to show us new coaches. We looked at a couple but mentioned that we really weren't in the market for a new coach unless there was something that just "wowed" us - and we mentioned a model that we had seen in Redmond at the FMCA rally. This was a Monaco Diplomat special edition called the "Tommy Bahama" model. We remembered that the coach was very pretty and had a lot of features that we really liked, including the decor. The salesman said that he thought they had only made a couple of them and that they weren't selling well because most people didn't like the colors. We told him that we thought it was great and that it was a good example of what "wowed" us. We then went out exploring Tucson and doing some shopping. The repairs on the coach were completed that day and we parked fully expecting to get an early start on Tuesday morning heading for California.

When we woke up Tuesday morning I was amazed to find a motorhome parked in the middle of the street, right in front of our coach. And even more amazed to find that it was the Tommy Bahama model Diplomat that we had talked to the salesman about. Here it was, sitting with the slides out completely blocking our path out. When the salesman came by about 8:00 he told us that after he had talked to us on Monday he checked and found that Beaudry had the coach at their facility in San Diego and he arranged for it to be driven overnight to Tucson so he could show it to us. We were shocked! We actually found ourselves tentatively talking to the salesman about trading up. Unfortunately, I started checking the more practical aspects of changing coaches and found that the cargo carrying capacity - very important to full-timers like us - in the new coach was just over half what we had in our current coach. We would go from well over 4,000 pounds capacity to about 2,700 pounds. This was a deal breaker for us and we had to tell the salesman so - he was quite disappointed. In a way, so were we, although we have no plans to change coaches, this was about as close as we have come in the last two years to actually considering a trade. Whew! Close call!

After a one night stop in Ehrenberg, Arizona, on the Colorado river, we arrived at Indian Waters RV resort in Indio on December 19th. Since this was our home town prior to our beginning our travel adventures, we had many people to see and places to go. The six days before Christmas found us going to numerous parties and get together's with our friends. One of the first parties was put on by Lynette and Bill at their home. All of our friends from the Indio Elks Lodge were there and we had a wonderful time.

On Christmas eve we went to Travis and Gails for another wonderful party. Travis showed his German heritage by cooking a tradional German holiday feast. The food was great.

We spent Christmas day at Jackie's Godson's house with his family and had a great time. Then, sometime between Christmas and New Years, I managed to catch the "Cold From Hell." Of course, Jackie caught it a couple days later. We did manage to get out for New Years Eve to spend it with our good friends Barry and Colleen, however, we only managed to stay up until 9:00, celebrating the New York new years party on the East coast TV channel.

On January 2nd we had to move from Indian Waters over to the Outdoor Resorts, however, all of our grand plans for visiting friends and doing things went out the window since both of us were too sick with the colds to leave the motorhome. We spent the entire five days at Outdoor Resorts on the couches feeling miserable. Our three weeks in the desert did not work out quite like we wanted.

On Monday, January 7th we packed up and headed for our next destination, San Diego, California. Fortunately, I had started feeling well enough that the trip went OK. We got settled into the Santa Fe RV park located in Pacific Beach, near Mission Bay. Its a small urban park, situated between the I-5 freeway and the railroad tracks, but its really not too bad. It is certainly close to all of the things we want to see and do in San Diego once we start to feeling better. As of today I am back to about 90 percent and finally sleeping well. Jackie, being a few days behind me, is still not feeling good and has not been sleeping well at all. Hopefully, we will be well enough by the weekend to start going out and doing fun things again. We'll keep you posted.

Until next time.