San Diego, Part 1 (Catchy Title, Right!)

I really like maps! In fact, when we drive, I often have the map on my iPad plus the paper map out as I follow along. 🙂 For Christmas, Kevin gave me a Garmin RV 1090 GPS (*see note below). It is as big as my iPad. The great thing about this one is it is for RVs. You add your trailer and truck information and then it sets the route based on length, height, and weight. It has a lot of added features that I devour, including direction and elevation. 🙂

Leaving Desert Olive Farms, at -151 elevation, we headed to San Diego, California. The road goes up to around 3000 ft. At the steep climbs every little while we saw a sign “Radiator Water” and then a concrete tub. That is a good idea. Garmin RV 1090 took us on I-8 to the San Diego valley instead of a short cut that we saw. Good thing! Once we got to the campground, we found that the short cut road doesn’t allow vehicles/trailers our length because of tight turns. So glad we didn’t have to try and backtrack! It was a great drive. Less than 10 miles from the suburb and up a mountain we were at Pio Pico Resort and Campground.

This campground is first come first serve, even with your reservation. We found a great site with gorgeous views out each window. There is a creek that runs along the back of our site. Lush trees, palm trees, and thick grass around and on the sides of the mountain. On the front side of our site we see a mountain with green grass, big bushes, and a few rocks. There are a lot of squirrels and rabbits here.

This day was Super Bowl and Kansas City Chiefs are playing. If you remember when we wrote about our travels to Missouri in October, that is where Kevin is from. (Yes, Chiefs are based in Kansas City, Missouri.) We had thought we would go to the club house here to watch but Kevin found the game on our TV so we stayed home and watched. I immediately made some pumpkin butterscotch chip cookies and hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls with cheese. Add chips and salsa and we had a party. The game was so close and KC was behind until the 2nd quarter. Then they pulled out a win. Awesome fun! The next day while just driving around and looking at San Diego we saw a restaurant that was called Kansas City Barbecue. The sign said, “Welcome Chiefs fans to Arrowhead West!” Very cute! 🙂

We had never been to Balboa Park although we have been to San Diego quite a few times in the past. We went this time and wow! Balboa Park is 1200 acres of attractions, 19 museums, San Diego Zoo, and gorgeous grounds. The history is interesting. At first 1400 acres were set aside for a park like Central Park in NYC but for years nothing was done. Later it became the Panama- California Exhibition 1915. We weren’t sure why Panama was in the name but then learned that the Panama Canal had just opened and San Diego wanted to show the world it was a great place to stop. They built all sorts of buildings for this event. The buildings are mostly still there; they look older than they are because they were built to resemble an old Spanish look. The decorating wasn’t made to last very long and it is a constant upkeep on it. Twenty years later they had another Exhibition. In World War 2 it was used by the military and housed soldiers. It had plenty of room to house, practice, and store all things needed. The name Balboa is for Vasco Nunez de Balboa, who was the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. We got there around 9:30 am knowing some museums opened at 10:00 am, or so their website said. We found a lot of parking open at the Air and Space Museum. We walked the “6 minutes” according to Siri to the plaza. The Museum of Photographic Arts was my #1 pick and Kevin said let’s go there first. The website was wrong and it opened at 11:00 am. No worries, we spent some nice time sitting on a bench at the duck and koi pond. (See the first picture.) The weather was sunny, warm, perfect. So fun to watch the ducks and even more fun to watch the people. At 11:00 am we went to the museum. I was thrilled so much because I saw online they are the first in the US to host the 2022 Sony World Photography Awards! This display didn’t disappoint at all! I am glad Kevin enjoyed it so much, too.

When we were done at that museum we were hungry so we grabbed sandwiches, chips, and drinks at Park Cafe, right next to the photo museum. I had tuna salad sandwich and he had hot ham and cheese panini. We took it outside, back to the bench we sat on this morning and enjoyed. Next we went to the San Diego History Museum. We were both disappointed in this one. We felt it didn’t give a lot of information. One fun fact we learned was: lumber was depleted in the backcountry around San Diego. The cost to ship lumber on the train from Oregon and Northern California was very expensive. Simon Benson owned large tracts of forest along the Columbia River. He had the logs float down the river. The tree-length logs would be lashed together like firewood and towed behind a boat down the coast of California. This process continued until just before WW2. In 35 years, 120 rafts arrived…1 raft = 6 million board feet = 460 residences. 120 rafts = 720 billion board feet = 55,200 residences. Wow!

We enjoyed Balboa Park so much we went back the next day to see more! We went to San Diego Automotive Museum. Kevin really liked it and so did I. The most fascinating exhibit to us was: 1947 Cadillac “Louie Matter’s Fabulous Car.”  It took 7 years and $75,000 and by 1952 his dream car was made. 

Read for interest the sign about the car!

Spreckels Organ Pavilion is the home of the largest outdoor pipe organ in the world. It has more than 5000 pipes ranging in length for 12 inches to 32 feet. They give a concert, for free, every Sunday at 2:00 pm. It seats 2500 people! The organ can make all sorts of sounds. For this concert there was the organ, a drum, a singer, and a 7-person choir…all doing Beatles songs! Kevin said it sounds great. Even though I am deaf and can’t hear anything, I enjoy watching the performance. I see the famous organist moving his feet to play different notes and in his body language I can sure tell he is enjoying what he is doing. The drummer liked to swirl his head around – I would have a headache! HA He was having fun. The singer and choir had happiness on their faces and I could sure see the love of music on their faces.

His socks have music notes on them!

I had a thought, I know, scary! HAHA Would’t it be fun to read from my travel journal the entry from 1 year ago. We started doing that every night before bedtime and what a great way to reminisce. This blog is part of my travel journal that I write in every day. But oh my, the blog posts are so long as it is so I do have to cut out a tons. Otherwise…you would be reading all day long! 🤣

*With regards to Garmin: we have noticed that several times the end point isn’t right. So I always check the directions with my other sources.