Escape from Oceanside

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With a little over a week here in Oceanside, we have more places to see. One day trip takes us back north past Camp Pendleton to San Clemente. From what we read, there is a nice trail for many miles along the coast so the plan is to bring along the bikes and go for a ride. We head to Linda Lane Park which wasn't very busy so there was plenty of parking. The park is just north of the San Clemente pier. We decide to head north first. Even though the park wasn't crowded, there were plenty of people out on the bike path enjoying the nice weather on this Sunday morning. We travel about five miles to Doheny State Beach. The bike/pedestrian path varies greatly over this distance from a hard packed gravel to three lane paved bicycle path adjacent to the Coast Highway. Even though it was a nice day, the beaches themselves were nearly empty. I guess it is December and I don't know what the water temperature is. 

San Clemente Pier

Along the Bike Path

Doheny State Park

We turn around and make our way back to the car to have our sandwiches we brought along. It was nice to sit on the bench and watch all the people going by. We put in some more money for parking and headed south. Bikes aren't allowed on the pier so we only briefly check it out. There were lots of people out surfing although the waves didn't look that great. The bike path heading south is not quite as nice and definitely shorter. After about two miles we end up in Calafia State Park and the path seems to end. Maybe it continues inland along surface streets but it doesn't follow the coast. We decided to head back to the pier and watch the surfers. 

As luck would have it, there was actually a surfing competition underway. I suppose that explained the large number of surfers and spectators. We found an open picnic table and plopped down to watch them catch a wave. At the table next to us was a family with two young boys. They both had the bleached blond hair and the mannerisms I have come to expect from "surfer dudes". One of them was icing his knee, so I suspect surfing is not a sport without some risk other than the obvious one - drowning! Every 15 or twenty minutes, the guy on the PA system would announce the next age group for the competition. With the late afternoon sun off in the west, we found it next to impossible to see the competitors. I did notice when one group of six went out, each one was wearing a different brightly colored t-shirt over their wet suit. I guess that's how the judges keep them straight. At one point a guy comes up and asks us how a surfing competition is scored. We told him his guess was as good as ours. 

At Surfing Competition

The next day we head south of Oceanside to Encinitas. It is only 15 miles or so. We understand the area near Swami's State Beach is a popular surfing spot, and now that we are experts on the sport, we figure we should investigate. Parking turned out to be quite the ordeal. There aren't many spots in the beach's parking lot and we drove well over a mile down the coast highway before we found an open spot. It definitely is a popular surfing spot. We saw several cars pull up and two or three guys would get in their wetsuits, grab their boards and head down to the beach. We wandered around up above the beach in San Elijo State Park before heading down a set up stairs to the beach. There were quite a few surfers out and the waves were a bit better today so we saw some doing pretty well. The guy that didn't have an ankle strap attached to his board seemed to be fighting a losing battle. After he would bail off his board, it would take him five minutes to come in to get it and then paddle back out. We eventually made it back up the beach to Swami's and headed up the stairs for the long walk back to the car.

Beach Volleyball

 

Surfers Near Swami's Beach

Mermaid Spotted on Beach

Homes with a View

There was one more thing in this general area we wanted to see. The San Diego Botanic Garden. Even though we are about 25 or 30 miles from San Diego, the botanic garden is up here in Encinitas. The property is 37 acres and has many paths crisscrossing all over the place. A large number of the plants are labeled so as we see something odd or interesting, we at least can find out what it's called. Lots of the fruit trees were producing fruit but visitors are warned about picking or taking it because of med fly infestations. It's too bad because some of them looked quite tasty. There are several life size statues of people that are also planters. They have various plants growing on them to give the figures quite an interesting look.

Unique Artwork at Garden

Interesting Foliage

Walkway to Overlook

Dancers

There are several sections throughout the park that are dedicated to the plants of a given region of the world. One rather large section is dedicated to children. There is a large treehouse and all sorts of toy areas. Even though we have long exited our childhood, there were plenty of things that we found interesting here as well. Had there not been so many parents with their kids here, we might have been able to play with some of them ourselves!  The majority of the park was currently decorated with lights and as sunset approached, the lights were turned on. The park closes at 5 but near the holidays, they have a separate event in the evening to see the park all lit up with Christmas lights. We were a bit tired and hungry so we finished up our tour and headed out. 

Chia Man?

Night Lights Before Nifght

Bright Flowers

Bikini Clad Mushroom

One highlight of our trip was the opportunity to visit with one of my cousins originally from Ohio. I remember as a kid often going over to my aunt and uncle's house to visit. Rose is 8 years older than me and her brother is my age so I would usually play with him and avoid the older siblings. We suspect the last time we saw one another was at our grandmother's funeral just under 30 years ago so there was quite a bit of catching up to do. We arranged to drive down to her place not far from Balboa Park in San Diego. My wife and Rose had never met before, but it turned out they have many common interests so there were lots of discussions to have and not much time. We took two of her dogs for a walk through the lovely neighborhood of North Park where she lives. My wife is a big fan of craftsman style bungalows and this area has a large number of them. Many are nicely cared for with a wide variety of styles and features to admire.

Next we hopped in the car and drove to Balboa Park. This is a huge place with all sorts of things to see and do. The famous San Diego Zoo is here as well as a couple dozen museums that cover the full gamut of interests from cars to science to culture and art. We keep it simple and just casually explore the area without spending all our time in one spot. Balboa Park is a location that really requires us to spend a couple weeks camped in a much closer campground to permit us to take it all in properly. Our visit today will just have to hold us over until that future return trip. We found a nice lunch spot and enjoyed food, drink and conversation. 

Fountain at Balboa Park

Reflecting Pool

Another Fountain

Large Innertwined Cactus

Ornate Entrance

Whimsical Statue

Next we jumped back in the car and Rose gave us a guided tour of the San Diego area. We aren't used to such a personalized tour. We ended up heading over the bridge to Coronado and lucked out finding a parking spot near the Hotel del Coronado. We got out and started to wander through the amazing grounds of "The Del" as it's called. Being built in the late 1880's, it is a pretty amazing building. Turns out it is the second largest wooden structure in the US. The first being the Tillamook Air Museum which we visited earlier this fall. I suppose we should investigate what is third on the list and add it to our itinerary! 

Hotel del Coronado

Christmas Bears Greet Us

Beautiful Roof

Before heading inside, I pull out the phone to see if there is a geocache nearby. Not too surprisingly, there is. With all the people wandering around, finding a geocache without arousing suspicion was going to be difficult. Chris and I usually don't enjoy trying to find these types of hides, but my cousin was quite intrigued so we had to persevere until we spotted the small bison tube. 

With that mission accomplished, we head into the main lobby of the hotel. It is quite the sight and being decorated for the holidays made it even more astounding. The Christmas tree was big and decorated nicely although it was hanging upside down which I hope doesn't become a big trend. There are many shops scattered around the various wings and hallways of the hotel. There were plenty of very expensive things to admire but we have a space issue with the motorhome so we didn't spot anything we just had to have. We then went out to the deck area and had drinks while we watched the sun set over the Pacific. The place was very busy since Santa was just 20 yards away meeting with kids and having photos taken. By the time we left, it was good and dark which made all the lights decorating the building that much more impressive. We headed back to Rose's place, said our goodbyes to the three very excited dogs and headed north to Oceanside. What a busy and wonderful day to spend with family.

Upside Down Christmas Tree

Lights Galore

The next morning, Chris headed back to the really good farmers market in town. When we turned on the TV at lunchtime to catch the news, the broadcast was completely centered on a wildfire that had just started a little after 11 AM. As the reporters are giving the live updates from various locations around the fire zone, we realize that the fire is about 15 miles to the east of us. This fire was being called the Lilac fire. That just seems a bit too pleasant of a name for a wildfire. This wouldn't normally be that much of a concern but we were experiencing very strong Santa Ana winds. These are coming out of the east and blowing right to us. Sure enough when I step outside, you can see all the smoke blowing high above us. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching television coverage of the fire as is grew from 5 acres to 50 to 1000 and kept getting closer. At times the smoke smell was not pleasant and there was ash coming down at the Elks Lodge. When the fire chief stated that this fire could get out of control and burn all the way to the Pacific through Oceanside, we got quite worried. 

Lilac Fire During Early Stages - We are at Pink X

We realized that we were not going to get any sleep tonight for fear there would be a knock on our door at 3 AM telling us to get out. Having seen past reports of some of the other fires near Napa where people didn't even have time to get their cars out, we knew we didn't want to experience that. A real plus of our lifestyle is that our home has wheels. We don't have to stay in harm's way. Some disasters provide ample warning (hurricanes). While others give little warning (tornados). And there are those that give no warning (earthquakes). This fire was proving enough warning that we felt obligated to heed it. So just before the sun set, I started packing up camp. We talked to our friend Michael and he suggested if we leave, we should head south first. We called the Elks Lodge on El Cajon which is just a bit east of San Diego and well away from the potential path of this fire. They said they had one open spot but could accommodate rigs for boondocking if need be. 

We have tried to follow the rule that we need to get into a campgrounds well before dark in order to setup with plenty of light. And for the most part we have been very successful at achieving this goal. So it did seem very counterintuitive for us to be pulling out of our spot well after sunset. The drive to El Cajon should only be a bit over and hour but there was a fair amount of traffic so it was closer to 90 minutes. Our next dilemma was to be our fuel situation. We had plenty of diesel to get to the Elks Lodge, but if we needed to boondock, we would need to run the generator. As a safety feature, so one doesn't run out of fuel while running the generator, the fuel line to the generator is tapped off the tank at about 1/4 (or is it 1/8?). Well we would be near the 1/8 point when we pulled into El Cajon, so we did another thing we generally don't like to do, head into a filling station without fully knowing there is room for us to do so. A quick evaluation of a fuel station we saw while we were waiting for a light at the off ramp of the expressway, led me to believe it could be done. Fortunately I was right and other than a pickup truck that started to head into the same lane I was already edging into, he wasn't willing to play chicken with a rig our size and he slid over to the other side of the pumps. With California fuel prices, I didn't fill up but did get plenty to last us if we needed to run the generator. 

As we pulled into the Elks Lodge, we saw a fifth wheel just backing into a camping spot. So it looked like we had just missed out on getting the last spot. But when we got out and walked over to survey the situation, we discovered there was one remaining spot next to this fifth wheel. We setup and went into register and pay. There was some sort of mixup with the paperwork, so they thought there was only one spot even though there were two. It cost us an additional $80 to stay here the 4 nights we would have stayed in Oceanside, but we didn't care. We had a spot with power and far away from the Lilac Fire.

Since we hadn't planned on being near our current location, we had to investigate what there is to see and do around El Cajon. Mission Trails Regional Park is less than 10 miles away and from what we could find out about it, there are lots of hiking trails and even better, plenty of geocaches hidden in the park. We pack a lunch and head over there with the hopes of doing some hiking and caching. We first go to the visitor center, and what a visitor center it is. More like what you might experience in a national park as applied to a county park. They have all sorts of exhibits including a bunch of very elaborate quilts being sold for some fundraiser. I suppose this is how they afford to have such nice facility. It was a pleasant time exploring the displays until a bus load of middle school students came in and showed how the acoustics of the building allow their screams to carry all over the place. 

Realistic Quilt

Chris' Favorite

Mission Trails Visitor Center

Deck at Visitor Center

We had picked a couple of trails that would give us a nice loop to hike which also included half a dozen geocaches. Our starting point would be the Old Mission Dam which is a couple miles north of the visitor center. The dam is situated on the San Diego River and was built in 1803. As we have found with lots of "rivers" out west, this one was underwhelming in terms of water volume. I suppose in times of rain, it might get somewhat bigger with all the hills to provide runoff but on this day it was more like a creek than a river. 

Old Mission Dam

We start our hike along the Oak Canyon Trail. The first few hundred feet were in deep sand and we were concerned we were in for a very challenging hike. But once we started to climb a bit, the trail was in much better shape. In about 2 miles we hit the northern edge of the park. There apparently are more trails on the other side of California Route 52 but aren't part of Mission Trails Park. There are many more geocaches in that area but we still have a good hike to do to get back to the parking lot. 

Along Oak Canyon Trail

We had originally made plans with Rose to meet in Torrey Pines for a hike but with us moving to El Cajon, we decided to come up with a more convenient location. We figured Mission Trails Park would be a good choice. Rose came over to our "place" and she got the tour. Tours don't take a long time in our motorhome. We had a quick lunch then headed over to the park. Our first stop was on the south side in order for us to find a geocache we needed for a challenge came we are trying to qualify for. It turns out even with the three of us scouring the area, we could not come up with it. So we found another cache that would work and headed to that one. Actually this worked out well since the other cache was on the short Deerfield Loop trail. There were a few other geocaches to look for along the way and Rose seemed to be getting into the groove of finding them. Unfortunately there wasn't much going on at the BMX track. There were maybe two people there but they were only standing around and talking, not actually doing flips and jumps. 

We then drove back up to the Old Mission Dam area again but this time we did the walk back south along the paved Father Junipero Serra Trail (hopefully there is an abbreviated name for this trail since it doesn't roll off the tongue). There were numerous caches along the way so we had a nice time walking, talking and occasionally searching for a cache. By then it was getting late so we headed back to the lodge. We talked Rose into staying for dinner so we could continue our conversations. By mid evening, the music started playing at the lodge and let's just say it was plenty loud. I'm not positive what was going on but the music wasn't like your would expect from a wedding reception. In fact, much of the music was stuff we lines and liked. As Rose headed out, the party was in full swing and we were tempted to see if we could crash it, but instead we went back to the rig and just crashed. We enjoyed spending the bulk of the day with our guest and look forward to a future visit to the San Diego area. 

At El Cajon Elks - Notice Fake Tree Cell Tower on Right

Our last day in El Cajon was spent taking it easy. We don't need to be tourists every day. In fact it gets tiring when we attempt to maintain a constant sightseeing mode. We headed to the library so I could get caught up on blogs and upload more TV shows and movies on Amazon Video. We come back and start to prepare for a travel day. Our next stop is the desert. It even has that in the town name - Desert Hot Springs.