Thursday, March 23, 2006

On to San Diego

We have settled in at an RV park in San Diego called Santee Lakes Preserve. It's as nice a place as we have seen and its as clean and well kept as any park we have been in....We even have a babbling Brook outside our bedroom window.

We have been busy and time seems to fly, but just to bring you up to speed.....
Left City of Rocks and got out on the highway heading West into Arizona. The vista's of that area are certainly something to behold. We are seeing everything that has been shown in the Arizona Highways magazines we have seen over the years. As we were heading West however, the weather turned bad for the first time on our trip with sleet, snow and rain. Yes and cold too. I thought Arizona was the place where all the snowbirds went to avoid this kind of weather.


Stopped for the night in Gila Bend (Sounds kinda neat like something out of the old westerns we watched on TV) There wasn't much there but "Augies Campground" was as neat, clean and friendly with free wireless even and all for the lowest price we've seen for camping at a private campground ($18.00).
We took the southern route (Interstate 8) that follows the Mexican Border quite closely and were stopped a number of times at Border Patrol inspection stops. It is apparent that there is quite a problem with border crossings in the area. At one point we even saw some people being taken into custody

Most of the area between City of Rocks and the California border was pretty wide open without too many surprises except when we reached Yuma, Arizona. With Yuma being right on the border we came across more RV Parks and RV's than we have ever seen in one place. We were told that this area is a major place to stop due to the available cheap Dental and Presciptions available in Mexico. Just east of Yuma, another surprise was the dunes in southern California....almost like the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan although not as big.

From Yuma and the Dunes we quickly hit the mountains and which were a little more that I expected.....13 miles of 6% grades isn't so bad going up, but coming down is very exciting in 17 tons of motorhome and towcar. For some reason, I had thought this southern route was less mountainous. One thing different about these "hills" was the fact that it looked like a big pile of rocks as in some big dump truck dumping huge rocks in a pile and no vegetation. Just different than what we had been seeing.

After driving through the mountains, we arrived at San Diego and the Santee Lakes Preserve, our campground for the next three days. As I said it's quite nice for being in the middle of everything and close to transportation. We have found that taking the public transportation gives us a better perspective of some the places we have seen, and the rapid transit system here is the cleanest we seen....no graffiti. Driving in new cities can be quite exciting and the rail system took us right to "Old Town" San Diego. From there we took the Trolley Tour of the city from Old Town, USS Midway, Coronado, Seaport, San Diego Zoo, El Prado.....a total of 10 stops, all at interesting areas. We stopped at the USS Midway an aircraft carrier from late World War II that was active through the middle 1990's.



We also stopped at Coronado to see the Del Coronado Hotel which is where the movie "Some like it Hot" was filmed with Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis. My Dad was stationed here when his ship was in during World War II and we have pictures of me at this hotel as a child on its beautiful beach.


Last stop for us was Old Town which is nice but a few too many shops for me. The Architecture was interesting though.

Our reason for going to San Diego was to see Marge's cousin Carol and her husband and we had a delightful Italian dinner at a restaurant called Trattoria Di IV an unassuming little place with really good food.

Tomorrow on to see our grandchildren...oh yes and our daughter and her husband too!

Sunday, March 19, 2006

City of Rocks State Park - New Mexico

Last year our friends Art and Janey Armstrong visited this State Park and were totally intrigued by it and needless to say recommended it as a must place to visit. We decided to visit for the weekend and it was everything they said, however they did not experience the 40 mph plus wind gusts and cool weather we did. Unfortunately, we stayed inside the motorhome most of the day but did do some walking when the winds died down a little.
This place is really unique, the rock formations are something to behold.

While we were there a group of boyscouts was camped nearby and it was great fun to watch them scurrying about and hiding from one another in all the formations.The vistas of the surrounding area and the sunsets were great also.While the weather wasn’t the best, the place was everything the Armstrong’s had recommended.
However it is isolated enough that a days visit is probably better that a whole weekend.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Fort Davis, Texas

Don't really know where to begin with Fort Davis...everyone thinks Texas is flat and not that interesting, but this area is just beautiful with hills..mountains, prairie and grazing grasslands and a really neat western fort that is one of the most well preserved western forts that the government had during the Indian wars. Its history included a primary role in the control of the Commanche and Apache indians of the area. The fort itself was abandoned in 1891 and not until 1961 was it authorized as national historic site and part of the National Park Service. We spent most of the day wandering the Fort and its buildings that have been and are being restored. I had expected the standard stockade like fort that we saw in the old western movies that were made but this place was built into the entrance of a box canyon. I was surprised to note that there were not any apparent defensive concerns although most of the activity of the day was construction of telegraph lines and roads and general improvement of the area rather than indian battles.
Below are the enlisted mens barracks...long one story buildings while the second picture is of officers row a series of small masonry officers housing.

There was lots of what looked like archeological work with excavations and the begininngs of the restoring of old foundations.Below is one of the officers quarters which was made of adobe material then plastered over after the adobe brick had been laid.
Couldn't resist - a closeup of the adobe brick and mortar

A view of the hospital building from the ridge above
One of the officers quarters buildings that hasn't had much done to it yet.



MACDONALD OBSERVATORY


Another nearby attraction is MacDonald Observatory that has the largest telescope mirror in the world. This facility is part of the University of Texas and is open to the public. There are a number of programs available. Unfortunately, we missed the program the day we visited. One of the interesting things we did see was huge sun dial.

Just us in beautiful Flat Texas

Monday, March 13, 2006

San Antonio, Texas

We arrived here Sunday evening to find that the the KOA Campground honored last years deposit and gave us one night for free. Great PR and a nice park. Got up early and on Art and Janey's advice took the bus downtown to the Riverwalk. We walked and walked....what a beautiful city!! We saw the original Alamo.....
Thats Davy Crockett's name she's pointing to!



It was neat..architecturally and historically although lots of touristy stuff across the street.

The river walk is something to behold! It is the center of the city and everything revolves around it. We took the 45 minute tour and it is a must for anyone who visits this city. After the boat ride we had a lunch at one of the waterside resturants and watched as everyone floated and walked by.

We really could have stayed longer in San Antonio and we would definitely would return to spend more time. We left Tuesday and made a quick stop at an old old brick company (see below), they still make the old building tile which was the precurser to cement block as well as number of other unique items.
Marge suggested we stop while heading West at Brackettville, Texas.... where John Wayne filmed the original Alamo movie. The set was still there and others like Clint Eastwood have made films there also. Its really just one of those touristy things, but kind of fun to see how the sets were built.

Recognize it from the movie?

Not to be out done, I suggested we make a stop at Langtry, Texas and see the home and bar of early western legend Judge Roy Bean. Known as the only law west of the Pecos River he was quite a character although why anyone would live there is beyond me. It's quite a desolate place.We are still in Texas, now at Fort Davis, which we plan to explore tomorrow. After that we plan to visit the city of rocks in New Mexico.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Moving Again!

Had some difficulty getting things posted for a few days. Not sure what the problem was but things seem to be working now. Just to catch up there were a few things that went on:

  • Spent time with the Jags friends from home that ended with two good meals...one at Kelly's in Key West (a favorite place) and we met them for breakfast Stuffed Pig the next day (another favorite place). They headed back home Tuesday Morning.
  • Lots going on….getting ready to leave, packing up the boat, storing the motor and generally battening down the hatches. “We” even found room to put the lobster buoys in that have been hanging here and there about the motorhome. I'm not sure what Marge has in mind for them.
  • We had a group over for a potluck dinner and we had a really good time kibitzing with everyone. Below are some of the pictures of the group that we have sort of hung about with. Most are going home in the next few days.
  • Bob and Gloria from Racine, Wisconsin, also had a potluck later in the week and offered as a main course some venison that was unbelievably good. Fun was had by all and of course I was again chastised as “Crash” because of the incident a year ago when I ran over the neighbor’s sewer pipe.......People even came out early Thursday to help direct me this year when we left.
  • As you may have surmised, we decided to leave a day earlier than planned and drove up to the Sarasota area and had dinner with our neighbors Art and Jean Laurie from home. They live a nice life ….4 or 5 months in the sun then back to Michigan. They have been married for almost 70 years.
  • It’s good to be on the road and moving again. We are both excited about getting beyond the Mississippi River to see some of this wonderful country. Our first major stop from here will be in San Antonio in a few days. Our first stop on the way was in a small campground near Marianna, Florida ......nothing special but a neighbors domestic dispute woke us a 3AM to screaming and yelling but finally settled down after an hour or so.
  • Spent last night in Lafayette, Louisiana. We saw a lot of devastation and we were only going along I-10 which was back considerably from the water! The wind has knocked down everything and it goes for miles. Once we got to Texas, we saw the same from "Rita" which did damage way inland also. Really hard to comprehend the degree of damage still obvious!!!! Neat little campground with built in Cajun music from some of the campers nearby.....Marge was ready to dance in the street!!!!
  • Right now we are in San Antonio at a nice campground for a couple of days and we intend to do the tourist thing and rest from driving. 400 to 500 miles a day for 3 or 4 days in a row needs a rest....or rather the driver needs a rest.

Movin on

We have had trouble posting the last few days but things seem to be working again. Right now we are at the Louisiana-Texas border on our way to San Antonio. If things work well later we will bring things up to speed then.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Looe Key Snorkeling

Our friends from home the Jagodzinski's arrived to check out their new condo and spend some time away from the "cold cold" North and we have been eating up a storm since they arrived. One item that both Marge and Dave wanted to do was to snorkel out at the Looe Key National Marine Sanctuary. Popular for skin diving, snorkeling, fishing and boating, the sanctuary is considered to be the most spectacular reef in the Lower Keys. The remains of the H.M.S. Looe which sank in 1744, and for which the sanctuary is named, still remains on the ocean floor within the sanctuary boundaries. This small patch of reef (about five acres)is located about 5 miles South of Big Pine Key with lots of outfits around the area to take you out there. We picked as calm a day as we could, but unfortunately the water wasn't as clear as we had hoped and the sun was not shining. There were lots of people out there in both private and a variety of the group boats (see below) like we went on moored to the permanent buoys located within the sanctuary.


Leaving Bahia Honda State Park

The Old Bahia Honda Bridge at the State Park
Receiving safety instructions and warnings before entering the water.

Dave and Marge in the water.
These boats are perfect and even have glass bottoms to them for viewing, but as I said earlier the water was not the clearest this day and not much could be seen. There were huge schools of Yellowtail Snapper everywhere though that people obviously feed, that swarm about you as you enter the water (which was a tad cool - 70 degrees) Some wore wet suits to keep warmer.

The day was fun and we even saw some porpoises as we were coming and going. Coming back I think everyone was hungry and tired from the exposure to the cold water, but it was a trip we'll remember for some time.