Sunday, July, 25, 2010. Before leaving Twentynine Palms on Friday, we went back to the Park to hike to Barker Dam, which was built by ranchers in the early 1900s to provide water for their cattle. The ranches failed, but the dam and the water are still there. It's now a stopover for migrating waterfowl, with ducks, herons, etc. In the distance, we could see bighorn sheep resting in the shade of a rocky overhang, watching us crazy people standing in the blazing sun taking their pictures. What must they think of us!?
After the Park we set out for La Jolla, at one point driving down a huge hill (several miles long) into a valley whose name I can't recall. At the bottom of the hill, towards Palm Springs, there's a wind farm with thousands of turbines. A little while later we entered one of California's infamous freeways, and people started to speed up and weave from lane to lane, something we hadn't seen since I-95 in southern Florida. Anyway, the road gods were with us, and we arrived at Chris and Neal's in La Jolla a couple of hours later. Their home is beautiful, and La Jolla is very picturesque. But it's overcast and unusually cold here near the ocean. Just as we were getting used to temps in the low hundreds, we're now in the high 60s. A few miles east it's around 90. After dinner, Neal and Chris took us for a walk on the boardwalk along the beach, and then for a drive to Mt. Soledad, where we looked out over La Jolla and San Diego.
On Saturday Neal and Chris (and David Moonan, Chris and Serry's nephew) took us to Palomar Mountain to see the Palomar Observatory, something I never expected to see in person. Along the way we stopped in Julian, an old western-type town now noted for its apple pies. Today, Sunday, Serry, Chris and I went for a hike on the paths overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the Torrey Pines Nature Reserve. In the afternoon, Serry and David went for a 19-mile bike ride on a path near the ocean, and Neal took me for a ride in his restored 1964 Shelby Cobra sports car. Beautiful, loud, and fast! In the evening, we walked along the cliff overlooking the beach in downtown La Jolla before having dinner. In addition to people-watching, you can see cormorants, pelicans, and sea lions. Chris said that in the winter you can see whales migrating to the waters by Baja California.
We expect to leave this beautiful place Tuesday morning, so we'll have to make the best of tomorrow.
From some place in FL:
ReplyDeleteWhen you travel - you don't just stop and look.
You get in with the natives!
It's hard work, but someone has to do it!!
Did you see evidence of last year's wildfires at Palomar?
ReplyDelete