Hemet, California

We left the San Diego area on Wednesday of last week and drove about 80 miles north and west to Hemet, California to spend Thanksgiving as Fran’s brother lives nearby in Perris (or P-town as he calls it).  As this area is a snowbird and retiree destination the RV parks are the huge mega-park resort types, which also means they are a little more costly than we are used to.  I picked the Golden Village Palms RV park as it got very good reviews and they offered a decent weekly rate and a row of pull-thru sites that kept you out of the spaces where the seasonal and year round residents lived.  It is a HUGE park and has many amenities and activities.  It is a 55+ park (so I now qualify) but they never asked me to prove my age!!

Here is a map of the park so you can get an idea of how huge it is (something like a 1000 spaces).

We had a very nice Thanksgiving with Fran’s brother and niece.  On Friday her brother took us to Riverside to view the lighting ceremony at the Mission Inn.  This is a historic hotel in downtown Riverside that started a Festival of Lights 15 years ago.  The festival starts with a lighting of the lights that adorn the hotel (something like 3 million lights).  Following the lighting ceremony they shoot off fireworks from the roof of the hotel. 

Here are some pictures of the hotel before the lights are on.

Here are some after the lights are lit

Sorry, it was difficult to get good pictures in the dark.  It was a very enjoyable evening.

Football watching on the weekend (for me), a visit with my parents and then a visit to Temecula will finish out this stop in Southern California.  We are then on to the Solvang area for a week or two of wine tasting and other adventures then back to Southern California for Christmas and New Years.

9 Month Update

We complete nine months of Life on the Road this week while we are in the San Diego area.  Since my last post we did a couple of days of sight seeing here in San Diego.  On Thursday we went to downtown San Diego to walk around Seaport Village, Horton Plaza and surrounding areas.  We had a great lunch at a restaurant in Seaport Village with outdoor seating near the water.

From our table we could see the North Island Navy base which is where the aircraft carriers park when in port.  One was in port, the Carl Vinson, which was where a college basketball game was held on Veteran’s Day.

We took a walk over to where the aircraft carrier Midway is berthed and took some pictures of statues they have on the “Greatest Generation Walk”.

Memorial to the U.S. San Diego

Midway

Tribute to Bob Hope

Huge statue of the famous Life magazine photo

As we walked further along the waterfront we found out that the America’s Cup World Series boat race is being held this weekend in the bay between Coronado and San Diego.  These are not the yacht type racing boats but rather catamarans.  As we arrived they were just getting ready to start the first race. 

We then proceeded to walk to Horton Plaza and my old office (Federal Building) when we came across a protest march for the Occupy Wall Street group.

On Friday the weather was colder and overcast so it dampened our plans for Balboa Park.  We still went to the park and rode our bikes around but it did get fairly cold so we packed up the bikes and went to Old Town for lunch and a pitcher of margaritas to warm us up and to forget the cold!

We finished the day by taking a drive up the coast to see our old neighborhood in Oceanside.  We lived there for about 3 years in the mid-80’s.  As could be expected the area had gotten very busy and the neighborhood had begun somewhat rundown.

Here is our updated map for our 9 month anniversary

Santee, California

It is moving day for us.  We left Lake Havasu City and drove about 300 miles to Santee, California, which is just south and east of San Diego.  Before I go more into Santee, let me tell you about the drive here.  The route I chose was to get back to Interstate 10 at Quartzite and then drive west to Blythe and pick up Highway 78 to cut across California diagonally to hook up with Interstate 8 and proceed into the San Diego area.  This part of Arizona and California is pretty much the same, nothing, just desert.  However the rock formations were unusual.  As we went through the smaller hills they were actually just huge piles of boulders.  Think of a small pile of stones you see on the ground and multiple that so that the pile rises to a 1000 feet.  These rocks were HUGE and in HUGE mounds.  I am not a geologist but if I had to speculate I would say these were made from a huge explosion that created a crater and then threw the debris.  They were just amazing. 

Next up was an interesting set of hills that definitely looked man made and surrounding these hills was a chain link fence topped with razor wire.  What is going on here?  A quick check of Google revealed the area is a gold mine.  Something like the second largest gold mine in the US.

Next up as we approached Brawley, California is a town called Glamis.  Now there is no real town here that we could see, but what is here is miles and miles of sand dunes and huge flattened areas for RV’s.  This is an off roaders paradise and you could see it by all the tire tracks in the sand.  It would be a blast to take an ATV or dune buggy and drive around on these.  To look at these dunes go to Google Maps and search on Glamis, CA.  This should bring up a map of highway 78.  The dunes are below Highway 78 on the screen.  If you scroll around you can see how far they go.  There are two huge RV storage lots at either end of the dunes with hundreds of RV’s being stored.  I am guessing the off roaders leave their RV’s in storage then just drive out towing their off road vehicles and then go pick up their RV to camp for the weekend. 

Ok, moving on to Santee, CA.  I picked this town as it had the nicest rated campground that was reasonably priced in the San Diego area.  The ones nearer the city received poor reviews as being very cramped, run down and expensive.  We do have a little drive to get to the city but I think it is worth the drive to stay in such a nice campground.  This campground, Santee Lakes, is owned by the water district and it is a combination park area, with a series of small lakes, and a 300 site campground.  The sites are level, well spaced and the park is very nicely maintained.  You can take a look at it at www.santeelakes.com.  If you look at the campground map we are in space 281.

Here are a couple of pictures

We are here for a week and will be doing some sightseeing as it has been a few years since either of us has been in the San Diego area.

London Bridge

As I mentioned in my last post the London Bridge was purchased and moved to Lake Havasu City many years ago as a tourist draw.  Today we took a bike ride over to the bridge to get some pictures.  It appears they dug out a small channel to make an island in the lake and then placed the bridge on the rode to the island.  On the island near the bridge are restaurants and shops with English names and themes.  I took a snapshot from Google Maps so you can see where the bridge is.  On the picture below it is right near the Pin marked A.

Here are some pictures we took of the bridge.

To make sure we can check off “been there, done that”!

On our ride back I noticed a propane truck driving by us on the road and started laughing at the name of the company, Passmore Gas.  I was not quick enough to snap a picture of the truck so I went online and put the name in Google and verified that it is a local company and the family that owns it is named Passmore.  I guess it was destiny they would own a gas company.  I was able to find a picture online of one of their tanks, but the truck picture was copyrighted.

I was also not able to get a picture of a Roadrunner bird that was in the RV park office when we arrived.  The park owner said the bird showed up one day in the office when the door was open and perched itself on the counter.  It comes by when the door is open and runs around the office.  It does get a little nervous around people but still it was amazing to see this bird hopping around the office.

It is always an adventure!

Lake Havasu City, AZ

We left noisy Tempe and are making our way to California.  We decided to stop in Lake Havasu City, AZ as it is in the general direction we are going and neither of us had ever been.  We both grew up in Southern California and can remember our friends always talking about Lake Havasu and going there with friends and family for weekends to boat on the river.  Since we were not boaters we just never bothered.  I can remember years ago the big news story when the town here bought the London Bridge and brought it over here as a tourist attraction for the area and all the jokes that came with it.  So, with all that past and really no travel plan, why not stop.

We arrived yesterday afternoon and have not really checked out the area.  Best we can tell so far is that there is not that much to do unless you are into water sports.  The desert views are spectacular and the sunsets are great.  Our RV park is adequate, nothing special, but it is on a little hill so it does have some nice views.  The downside is that the spaces are close together.  Here are some pictures I took from the RV park.

Our rig (the one in front of the red truck).

RV park

View of the lake and mountains

Sunset

Since arriving in Arizona it has been interesting to see the RV culture here as this state is one of the destinations for snowbirds.  There are RV parks everywhere and they are large.  One of the biggest destination areas is Quartzite, Arizona.  It is at the junction of Interstate 10 and Highway 95.  The town is in the middle of nowhere but supposedly it becomes a bustling city of over 100,000 during the winter.  We had driven by it a few years  back when driving from Phoenix to Los Angeles and was wondering what all the parking lots were (actually RV parks).  At that time they were empty because it was the off season.  Now we went through it on our way to Lake Havasu and it is really picking up.  There are RV’s everywhere.  We saw many RV’ers coming south on Highway 95 as we made our way to Lake Havasu.  Their license plates indicated they were coming from Oregon and Washington.  Many RV’ers choose to boondock, meaning they park on open land and have no hookups.  You will be driving on the road and see a few off in the distance.  To cater to these boondockers we noticed a business in town that allows you to drive your RV in and buy water to fill the tanks and a dump station to dump your waste tanks.  Then it is back out to the desert.

We had a great time in Tempe visiting with our daughter.  We had not seen her since she and her fiancé visited us in February just before we left for our “Life on the Road”.

Phoenix Update

It has been pointed out to me that I left you all hanging from my last post regarding the issue with the windshield on our truck.  Prior to bringing the truck to the Ford dealer on Monday morning I removed the tape I had placed on the molding so they could clearly see the issue.  After removing the tape it was even more evident that there was a problem with the exterior molding around the windshield.  The molding had moved away from the glass so you could actually see the edge of the glass.  I was at the dealership bright and early and they looked at it and said they would have a mechanic evaluate it and if the windshield needed to be removed or replaced it would require approval from Ford.  I was told I could wait.  About 45 minutes later I was told the truck was ready and the service tech told me they feel it is just the molding and they glued it back to the windshield.  So far there has been no noise and the molding is on tight, so we will see.

We are finishing up our second week in the Phoenix area and the only sightseeing we did was to go to the Heard Museum which is devoted to Native Americans.  It was extremely interesting.  We have visited with our daughter and her fiancé.  We also checked out RV parks for our return visit in March next year for the wedding and settled on a KOA outside of town.  The spaces are nice and large and it is outside of town so not as much noise and activity.  The park we are currently in has many people who leave for work early in the morning so there is noise from cars, plus there is a fire station nearby and they have multiple calls every night with sirens a blazing.  It is just a little busy for our liking. 

On Wednesday we move to Lake Havasu for a week then onto Southern California for Thanksgiving.