Point Loma

In 1542, Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo, a Portuguese sailing for the King of Spain, led the first European expedition to explore the west coast of the United States.  In 1913, Woodrow Wilson set aside a half acre of Fort Rosecrans for a monument to him, but there was no statue provided for it until the Portuguese government gave this one to the United States in 1939.  It overlooks San Diego from an elevation of 380 feet at the southern tip of Point Loma.  In this picture, the closest land in the background is NAS North Island and the City of Coronado.

We started our exploration of Point Loma in Ocean Beach where Interstate-8 ends at a traffic light.  Ocean Beach is bounded on the north by the mouth of the San Diego River.  When Mother Nature designed the river, she made the mouth a large marsh that the Spanish called False Bay.  Shortly after WWII, man cleaned up this messiness by straightening the river and dredging the marsh which is now a big playground called Mission Bay.

The land behind the river's south jetty became a large sandy beach.  In 1972, it became the very first Dog Beach.  We did not know it was there and stumbled upon it quite by chance.  It is a great place for dogs that need lots of space to run and that love the water, but for Sadie, it is a very strange environment; the sand looks like snow but doesn't melt in your mouth and the water tastes bad and lunges at you unexpectedly.  Nancy and I both were concerned about being out too long in the midday sun and so our visit to the beach was brief which seemed to suit Sadie just fine.

Traveling south from Dog Beach, the ocean front quickly becomes steep cliffs and the whole peninsula becomes a giant rocky spine.  In Ocean Beach, Catalina Boulevard takes you up to the top of the ridge and ends at the edge of town at a gate that is only unlocked from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day.  Beyond this point you are on the Fort Rosecrans Military Reservation and the street becomes Cabrillo Memorial Drive.

A large portion of the Reservation is now taken up by the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.  Established in 1882 as the post cemetery and designated a national cemetery in 1934, it stretches for a mile on both sides of the road and contains 101, 079 graves.  Beautifully maintained, it slopes away towards the Pacific on one side and San Diego Bay on the other and is an impressive sight.

The tip of Point Loma lies just past the cemetery.  While the Cabrillo National Monument is the main draw, visitors can also tour the nearby Point Loma Lighthouse which was in operation from 1855 until 1891.

Since dogs must be kept in the car at all times, Nancy stayed with Sadie while I got out and took some pictures.  While the view was great, everything was so far away that the haze in the air made most shots look slightly out of focus.

Day 130
Bonita, CA

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Balboa Park

The courtyard in the House of Hospitality

In 1868, San Diego became the second U.S. city to establish a large public park when it set aside 1,400 acres for community use.  New York had been the first, ten years earlier, when it created Central Park.

Known simply as City Park, the land remained largely undeveloped until 1909 when the president of the Chamber of Commerce came up with the idea of bolstering the city's image by staging an exposition to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.  City Park was selected as the site for the expo and was renamed Balboa Park to honor Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama.

The 1915 Panama-California Exposition was a bold move.  San Diego had a population of less than 40,000 and no city that size had ever held a world's fair.  Though Congress had appropriated $5 million to celebrate the canal's opening, the lion's share went to bankroll San Francisco's party, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.  In spite of this, San Diego managed to raise the additional funds it needed on its own, and the gamble paid off.  The expo was such a big success that it was extended for a second year.

In the midst of the Great Depression, San Diego once again decided to stage an expo, this time to help its struggling economy.  A hit like its predecessor, the 1935 California-Pacific International Exposition was also continued for a second year.

The success of the expos was due in part to the dazzling design of the buildings erected to house them.  Despite the fact that these buildings were never meant to outlast the expos, they were so stunning that, fortunately for us, many people resisted their destruction.  Though many of the structures were beyond saving and had to be demolished, the preservationists did manage to save a few jewels from both the 1915 and the 1935 expositions for us to enjoy today.

This is the area we chose to visit.  In addition to the core of historic buildings, it contains many new additions that have been built in a complimentary style.  There are wide pedestrian walkways lined with numerous fountains and gardens and a wide variety of museums, but for us, the best part was that we could take Sadie everywhere, except in the buildings, as long as she was on a leash.

We wandered the grounds and took pictures until we were dragging and still missed most of it.  If we had wanted to actually visit the museums, we would have needed several weeks.  And this is just a small part of the park which includes, among many other things, the world famous San Diego Zoo.

Here is a small sample of what we did see.

Flower in Zoro Garden

Casa del Prado

Casa del Prado

The statue of El Cid

Day 129
Bonita, CA

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Another rainy day

Sunrise

The rain held off just long enough for us to make a run to Costco for gas and groceries and a quick stop at PetSmart for some doggy treats.

Day 128
Bonita, Ca

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Coronado

Once upon a time there were two islands; North Coronado Island, which actually was an island, and South Coronado Island, which was not.  In reality, South Coronado Island was just the bulbous tip of a very narrow, seven mile long, sandy peninsula called the Silver Strand.  In 1886, land speculators  bought both of them and decided to build a lavish hotel, a popular strategy of that day for turning a patch barren sand into something special.

When it opened in 1888, the Hotel del Coronado was certainly that.  It was the largest resort hotel in the world and the first to have electric lights.  It was also heated by the world's first oil furnace.

Flat, sandy North Coronado Island was left undeveloped, a place for hotel guests to hunt or ride horses, which was fortunate, as it proved an ideal spot for the first naval aviators who began training there as early as 1911, just eight years after the Wright brothers historic flight.  By 1917, the government had appropriated the land and construction was begun on runways for a naval air station.

During World War II, North Island was the principle support base for all operations in the Pacific.  In 1945, the base was expanded by filling in the shallow bay called the Spanish Bight which had separated North Island from the city of Coronado.  Today, about two thirds of the consolidated landmass is occupied by the Naval Air Station.  That the rest is taken up by one of the most affluent communities in the country strikes me as exceedingly odd.

For a town sharing space with such a large and active military facility, Coronado is a surprisingly tranquil place that wears its wealth without a lot of pretensions.  Maybe being here on a Sunday had something to do with this impression, but we found the atmosphere much more laid-back than La Jolla.  Nancy has decided that this is her second favorite place on this trip; Monterey still remains first.

We started our visit with a stop at a small park on the waterfront where the ferry to San Diego used to dock before it was replaced in 1969 by the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge.  The land had been sold to developers but was saved for public use through the efforts of three local citizens.  A smaller ferry still operates nearby, but I think it is primarily used by tourists.  There are also a collection of shops and restaurants and a small beach, plus a front row seat to downtown San Diego across the bay

We explored the rest of town by car, then bought some lunch and took it to the beach to eat.  We parked just down the street from the Hotel del Coronado.   Even after all these years, it is still the star of the show here.  After finishing our lunch, we leashed up Sadie, and went to take a closer look.

Before we were through, we had walked all the way around it.  It is so picturesque, so iconic, that I thought that getting good pictures would be easy, but I was wrong.  There are few clear lines of sight and it is almost too big to photograph.

The shot at the beginning of this post was one that I wrote off at first because the light was all wrong, so I just used it to experiment with, and I'm glad I did.  Here is one that came out better with only minor tweaking.

Day 127

Bonita, CA

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Goin' nowhere

It rained all morning.  While we were stuck inside, I took this picture through the window of the RV.  I was surprised when he stayed put long enough for me to get out my camera.

It finally let up in the early afternoon, but by then we didn't feel much like driving anywhere, and made do with a long walk around the park with Sadie.

While we were out, we discovered that there is a Burrowing Owl living in an old ground squirrel burrow not far from our RV.  We spooked it as we walked by and a nice lady out birding told us what it was.  I didn't even know there was such a thing.

Day 126
Bonita, CA

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Oh my, I do so love a bargain

Our sole outing for today was to Old Navy in National City where Nancy found a great pair of pants on clearance for $5.47.  They go very nicely with her pirate boots.  I told her she was stylin'.

Day 124

Bonita, CA

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La Jolla

The locals are fond of saying that the name is an English corruption of La Joya which means The Jewel in Spanish, but it is just as likely to be a Spanish corruption of the native name for the place which meant land of holes, possibly a reference to the sea caves found along the coast here.

The area has been part of San Diego since California became a state in 1850 but wasn't surveyed and subdivided until the 1880s.  It didn't get it's first stop sign until 1944, and up to the 1960s was noted for its isolation and exclusivity.

Though no longer isolated, it is still an expensive place to live.  Coldwell Banker's annual survey for 2008 and 2009 said La Jolla had the most expensive home prices in the nation.   One of John and Cindy McCain's many homes is here.  Mitt Romney owns a $12 million vacation home here, as well.

La Jolla is also home to The Salk Institute, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and the University of California, San Diego campus.  It's not your average seaside resort community.

Despite this, the beach for several miles is open to the public and with just a few exception is bordered by public parks.  Out of it all, our favorite spot was La Jolla Cove at the southern end of La Jolla Bay, which, by no coincidence, is also a favorite hang out for dozens of sea lions and hundreds of sea birds.

Though I took lots of pictures, both here and elsewhere along the shore, my favorites all seem to involve birds.  Here are a few.

Day 124
Bonita, CA

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