We have had a good time in San Diego visiting Carol’s friends who live in a beautiful suburb of San Diego called Carlsbad. Their house has a fantastic view over a canyon leading to the ocean and with the mountains on the right.
I really enjoyed the tour of the USS aircraft carrier the Midway. Built during WW2 with a straight flight deck and rebuilt since then to incorporate an angled flight deck and steam catapults for fast jets. The guides or docents as they call them here were almost all ex Midway crew and it was quite special to listen to someone who had fought during one of the wars describe how flight operations went. I had met in St Lucia a navy pilot who had flown Crusaders and his description of night carrier landings came flooding back to me as I listened to a flight controller tell stories of night operations in the south China sea. There was a wide range of aircraft on show from a WW2 Dauntless to F4s 14s and 15s all in carrier spec.
The museums at Balboa Park in San Diego were good in parts.
The automotive museum included the Cadillac that had been driven non stop around the USA. It had been modified to allow wheel changing on the move [essential] and it was fitted with a iron and iron board in the rear seat [why?].
The museum of man had a good section on the Mayans, but little was original. It included some nice baskets and pottery work many centuries old, however they are mixed in with stuff produced in the last five years.
The thing I enjoyed most was the Japanese garden. The cherry trees were in blossom, the koi were huge, the Bonsai tiny and twisted and the sense of tranquillity was everywhere.
After San Diego I had a mornings flying with the Palomar RC club [ Thanks to Joe Buko for showing me the ropes ] at their premier flying site, Johnson Field. Two things stick in my memory. This was another club just about the size of my old club at Offley with their own field which sports a 600 x 40 tarmac strip, shaded pits with ali. topped starting tables and a small grandstand. The second thing occurred when I was talking about how nice it was to be flying on a perfect cloudless sunny day with no wind, and some one asked how often that would happen in England. Perhaps I was only remembering the bad days but my answer was one or two days a year, they said that this was their normal, expected flying conditions.
After flying we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Angeles. The surf was up and the beaches were fairly busy. We stopped at Huntington beach for lunch and it was vignette on Californian life. Bikini clad teenagers jogged past us stopping to hug trees. [Yup real tree huggers.] Bald headed 40 somethings were running into the sea carrying surfboards. Shiny faced ladies of indeterminate age in colour co-ordinated clothes, power walked past carrying bottles of designer water, sometimes with a matching dog.
We visited the freak show that is the board walk at Venice beach. A grey haired rasta was skating along playing good guitar jazz with an amplifier in his back pack. Some hard bodied gents worked out in the open air gym and oiled each others pecs. A reasonably well dressed man with a funny hat stating “ Support my alcoholism” panhandled for dollars, being honest about his need for beer. Several sidewalk musicians played for tips, including a grey haired old lady belting out Beethoven on a baby grand piano. Kids on skateboards, 40 year olds on skateboards and rollerblades whistled past, many with a serious tattoo habit. Amongst the tat we did find some good Mexican cotton and Carol was tempted.
Carol’s bit.
Got to Los Angeles, a nightmare to drive around, not RV friendly but we managed to drive down Rodeo drive. Full of designer shops and people with more money than sense. We parked at the other end of it where all the houses are and took Charro for a walk. Nice houses and gardens but they all had big time security measures in place, so I guess that is the price of living in a famous area. We drove through Hollywood and Bel Air, didn’t see Posh and Becks. Some of the streets are obviously named after stars, we went past Hayworth avenue and Bronson avenue. A lot of the old film studios are derelict now as production has been moved to a different area.
These areas are very much have ,and have not, mixed in together. Not like England where the areas tend to be separated.
We moved onto to find the Autry museum, which is the history of the cowboy. We saw all the old names, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Cisco kid ( remember him and his horse galloping at a rate of knots to wobbly music ) and loads more. It was very well presented, but reminded us of our ages, as it was our era.
It was good to see all these famous names and places that you see on the television, but it was good to get out of the city, and into country again. Going from one to the other is a good balance of interest, and now we are sitting in Sequoia National park
waiting to see if we get raided by black bears in the middle of the night.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
After the giant urban sprawl of LA we headed up into the mountains to see the “ Big Trees”. We climbed from the valley floor to 7000 feet and found 3 to 6 foot of lying snow, however the sun was shining and it was warm enough to walk around without a jacket. We camped at altitude amongst the snow and enjoyed our best nights sleep for a while. It was absolutely silent up there in the mountains and the air was crisp, clear and fresh. The rangers were very active and we got a ticket for not having an entrance fee receipt showing. The ranger was a short**** and missed it on our windshield. There were a surprising number of people camping in tents on the snow.
This was an absolutely great experience and I got to make contact with the largest living thing on this earth, the General Sherman.
Charro’s bit
I don’t know what is going on. One day I am walking along the beach worrying about bikini clad, rollerblading, California air head teenagers and the next day I am walking in the snow looking up at 6 foot high banks of the white cold stuff and worrying about out of control sledgers. The rangers were really busy stopping them. To cap it all the trees here give a fellow an inferiority complex. How can you cock a leg on something 300 feet high and a 1000 years old.
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