Doheny State Beach<\/strong> is a really cool place in the daytime. \u00a0It’s in the middle of town, tucked in between the ocean and the I-5\/Amtrak corridor. \u00a0Come to think of it, we will spend five of our seven nights within 200 yards of the train tracks. \u00a0Life on the California Coast, I guess.<\/p>\n This particular day was sparkling clear after the storm passed through but was also cold and windy. \u00a0Tyler and I went exploring. \u00a0We ended up at the mouth of\u00a0San Juan Creek<\/strong>, where it flows out of its concrete culvert into the ocean. \u00a0We were just goofing around, stomping those little sand cliffs that form at the edge of little creeks in the sand … you know, fun for all ages of kids! \u00a0Then the ocean stole Tyler’s ball!! \u00a0I handed it to him, he fumbled the handoff, and the wind took it down the hill and into the surf and that was that! \u00a0The beach was very steep, and the waves broke very<\/em> near shore, so the darned ball just bobbed up and down on the swells, and never, ever caught that foamy part of a breaking wave that would bring it back to shore. \u00a0If this had happened at the Encinitas beach, no problem. \u00a0The beach is nearly level, the (great surfing) waves break 150 yards out, and that ball wouldn’tve had a chance of escaping. \u00a0 oh well…<\/p>\n We went to the recommended coffee place, JB’s Something or other. I liked it, but Martha most definitely did not. \u00a0They evidently did not understand the concept of a short pull<\/em> for her triple iced espresso, and then they did the unforgivable<\/em>, the snotty barista dropped the “this isn’t Starbucks<\/em>” bomb. \u00a0Really, really not cool of them.<\/p>\n Then was the pleasant, relatively short drive down 1 as far as we could go on it. \u00a0Then because we had no choice, it was freeway time. \u00a0I-5 through Camp Pendleton<\/strong>, then 1 again through Oceanside<\/strong>, Carlsbad<\/strong>, Leucadia<\/strong>, Encinitas<\/strong>, to Cardiff<\/strong> and San Elijo State Beach<\/strong>, our home for the next two nights.\u00a0 Martha and I lived here for ten years, 1981-1991.\u00a0 She grew from 2 to 12 in these lovely environs, so it was a nostalgic journey. \u00a0For most of those years I worked at home and commuted up to my company – Zenographics<\/strong> – in Irvine<\/strong> every two weeks. \u00a0So the last two days have been chocked full of memories for me. \u00a0I’ve done that Laguna\/Dana Point\/Pendleton run many times.<\/p>\n We explored downtown Carlsbad in a failed attempt to find a lunch we wanted. I think mainly that no one was super hungry, so our standards were very high! \u00a0We got to to our campground 2-ish, and took occupancy of our site – woo! \u00a0We played around on the beach a little. \u00a0There’s still a lot of kelp from the storm. \u00a0Five-ish we all pile back in the van to find the Mexican restaurant Yelp recommended. \u00a0The food turned out to be great, but it wasn’t much on ambience, we we got takeout. \u00a0A campfire was in our plan for the evening, Martha had even brought s’mores fixings, but we didn’t get firewood so it didn’t quite happen. \u00a0Unlike 95% of\u00a0humanity, I am not a big campfire guy, so if it was gonna happen Martha needed to be the one to make it happen and she didn’t, so there you have it. She kept the graham crackers and ate the chocolate and I came home with marshmallows that have by now turned to stone. :)<\/p>\n WHUFU page for: San Elijo State Park<\/a><\/b><\/p> \n Expensive, but oh so cool, on the bluffs at Cardiff CA. The town is right across the highway, great bluff-waking for miles northward, Cardiff Beach and beach side restaurants southward. \r<\/p>\n \r<\/p>\n Mornings and evenings are often pretty gray and damp. Nice firepits.<\/p>\n<\/p> <\/p><\/div> Martha surprised me by agreeing to go Little Moore’s<\/strong> for breakfast! Back in the day I loved their beef teriyaki and eggs with steamed rice, an odd but very tasty breakfast. \u00a0Tohe musty, frumpy vibe were pretty much the same as 15 years ago.\u00a0The servers are still hot beach bunnies, but the teriyaki was scrawnier and less tasty and way more expensive – $13 for a little spiced beef and eggs and rice? please. \u00a0But a successful piece of nostalgia nonetheless! Martha discovered an acceptable coffee place down the block. \u00a0She and the barista had a little discussion about how to do a short pull, and the results were good!<\/p>\n Back to camp. M went down the 90-odd stairs to the beach while me and Ty chilled in the van. I seemed to really need a nap. Ty was happy to play games on the iPad for a while, but eventually he went down the stairs to find his Mom. When they got back I got some stinkeye from Mom\u00a0for letting him go alone.Deserved stinkeye I’m sure, but I was so asleep I barely remember him going.<\/p>\n In the afternoon we did a quickie run to Legoland<\/strong>. \u00a0Legoland is insanely expensive, something like $70 for an adult 1 day admission. \u00a0 BUT … you can go in for one hour for free<\/em>! \u00a0The dealio is that\u00a0you have to plunk down the credit card for the $210 to buy our tickets, and but if you\u00a0return\u00a0to the ticket\u00a0window within 60 minutes of the timestamp on the ticket\u00a0they willdo a refund transaction for\u00a0the whole amount back to you. You can’t really see the whole place in that time, but you can see a lot and get a feel for it. They are Legoland veterans, so Tyler knew exactly which ride he wanted to go on. \u00a0We got there late in the afternoon (3-ish), so the parking was also no charge. We did our quick tour and got the heck out. I quite enjoyed it.<\/p>\n Yelp-recommended happy hour sushi after that. \u00a0It was very tasty and we felt really good about it at the time, but both M and I had certain amounts of gastric distress that night – ugh. \u00a0Who ever heard of getting the farts from sushi?!?! \u00a0The likely culprit IMO was the spicy oyster shots. \u00a0Maybe straight-up sushi without the fancy stuff mighta been the ticket.<\/p>\n Back to the coffee place in Leucadia for a return engagement.\u00a0 Our morning ritual has settled into this:\u00a0 We go to a regular breakfast place where I have regular breakfast and she endures it,\u00a0then we go to a fancy coffee place she has researched\u00a0and she has some kind of fancy espresso drink – iced triple espresso (short pulls!) is the drink du jour on this trip\u00a0– and\u00a0possibly a gluten-free goody of some kind. This is not\u00a0achievable\u00a0every day. \u00a0If we reverse the order hit the coffee place first and they have acceptable pastry for me, then we are done for morning!\u00a0 For better or worse, I can go well into the afternoon on coffee and a big fat almond croissant.<\/p>\n Then back to the beach, our beach<\/em>. \u00a0Checkout is at 11am. I had the brilliant insight that we can decamp and simply drive the van outside around the corner and park on the highway by the fence, walk through the gate and be exactly were we camped for the last two days. It’s about 20 more steps to the beach, and we can park there all day, use the same bathroom, etc.<\/p>\n So, M and T stay on the beach and I hoof up the\u00a090 steps back to the campground, check out at the gate and move the van. Then I hoof back down and we hang out at this perfect spot on this perfect day for much of the afternoon. Brilliant!<\/p>\n When we did finally leave, I insisted that we visit the San Elijo Lagoon Visitors Center<\/strong>, which as awesome.\u00a0 They have a resident desert tortoise (Stanley), and a most excellent relief map of the watershed of the lagoon that stretches 40-50 miles inland, well past I-15 and Escondido.\u00a0 It was outside and interactive<\/em>\u00a0 – which is to say that there is a bucket of water and a cup, and you are encouraged to dribble water whereever you want upcountry and watch it flow down the valleys, through Escondido, through the coastal mountains, to the lagoon and the sea.\u00a0 Watching water flow is one of the joys of my life, so I really, really liked this simple thing, and thought it was all around awesome.<\/p>\n Then onward to hug the coast on our way to Campland.\u00a0 Solana Beach<\/strong>, Del Mar<\/strong>, the heights of Torrey Pines Golf Course and biotech firms and UCSD, back down to La Jolla<\/strong>, where we had bargain fish tacos, to Pacific Beach<\/strong> and our beloved Campland On the Bay<\/strong>.\u00a0 We were assigned the same “campsite”, a parking space with a picnic table for $55\/night (!!).\u00a0 My laptop even remembered the wifi login from two years ago.<\/p>\n WHUFU page for: Campland By the Bay<\/a><\/b><\/p> \n Epically deluxe RV park: pool, hot tubs, beach, playgrounds. \r<\/p>\n In the middle of San Diego, two miles from Pacific Beach ocean beach, four miles from Balboa Park. <\/p>\n<\/p> <\/p>tonight<\/b>: \n Stayed here four days and loved everything except San Diego traffic.\r<\/p>\n \r<\/p>\n "No hookups" here means parking in the boat parking lot. If you're lucky you can pull over a picnic table.\r<\/p>\n \r<\/p>\n But it's centrally located, close to the beach, restaurant, frisbee field, and basketball court, so it's great.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div> We explored and played on the grass and shot hoops and ate at the Campland restaurant and hit the pools and hot tubs and showered in the heated bathrooms and did all those things that make Campland possibly even worth the $55\/night that they charge me to park in their parking lot.<\/p>\n Back to the southern end of La Jolla for coffee at Bird Rock Coffee Roasters<\/strong>, which turned out to be my favorite (along with the Handlebar<\/strong> in Santa Barbara) of all the fancy coffee places we’ve been to.<\/p>\n Then onward to what became a horrible traffic day, too similar to the horrible traffic day we had last time we were here. \u00a0Evidently it is a fool’s errand to try to find any place in the Sea World\/Airport\/Midway area if you do not know exactly where you’re going and how to get there. My simple goals were to get diesel at the station GasBuddy said was cheap, and to do a drive-by on the train station to make sure we can find it early tomorrow morning – Apple Maps and Google Maps (which both suck balls in my opinion) were not clear on this. \u00a0Achieving these simple things took about three hours for a variety of extremely frustrating reasons involving diabolical traffic patterns, traffic volume near the beach, and crappy advice and crappy performance from my usually trusty iPhone apps. Apple Maps and the new Google Maps each significantly SUCK as compared to the trusty ole Google Maps that came with previous iOS’s.<\/p>\n Eventually we got the diesel, found the train station (for all the good it would do us), had a restorative meal at In ‘n Out (lettuce wrap is gluten free!!<\/em>), and got Martha to a beach for a while. Ocean Beach<\/strong> in this case. \u00a0It was the beach closest to the traffic hell-hole we were in, and I’d never been there, so why not? Well, why not is because traffic was horrible and it was ridiculously crowded on this beautiful Sunday. All those people in all those housing tracts they keep building and building and building in the interior hills head straight west on I-8, and I-8 ends at … Ocean Beach. It’s very clear in retrospect why this was a bad idea. Now I know.<\/p>\n Home to Campland. Mom needs a little quiet time so it’s frisbee on the grass, shooting hoops, and a little playground action for Tyler and Grandpa, while Mom gets her R&R. Then back to the van to navigate those Campland speed bumps to head out for our final evening – sunset and gluten-free pizza in La Jolla. I wanted to just hang at the campground, but Martha really wanted one more hit of La Jolla on their last night in So Cal. \u00a0So that’s what we did and I’m glad. \u00a0We had a good time…<\/p>\n Turns out the train leaves at 6:05 EXACTLY. \u00a0We set the alarms for 5:20, but despite our conscientious efforts yesterday, Apple Maps f—ed me into not finding the station on the first try. Really, we should’ve set the alarms for earlier. \u00a0We did pull up at 6:04 but by the time Martha got Tyler’s shoes on the train was gone. \u00a0Trains being the odd creatures that they are though, we were able to catch up with it<\/em> in Solana Beach, where it was to arrive at 6:43. That was a strange experience, blasting up I-5 at 6:30 on a Sunday morning, dawn breaking, from four to seven or eight lanes of freeway in each direction. \u00a0Usually full of cars in the daytime, but pretty much deserted now. Speed limit 65, I am pushing 75 and thinking I’m hurrying, yet about half of the few other cars out there are blasting by me like I’m a slowpoke. So I speed up to be just a little slower than the fastest car passing me, which was about 84-86 mph. We do actually make it to SB in time to catch the train. Very hurried goodbyes to Martha and Tyler, then boom!\u00a0 They are gone and and we are all back\u00a0on track for\u00a0the Sunday we’d planned. \u00a0Them to sit on the train for 11 hours, me to return to Campland and re-organize the van back to bachelor mode for the second half of the trip.<\/p>\n Here I am, back at our Campland campsite\/parking space, completely wired having already had a day’s worth of excitement and stress, and it’s only 7AM!! I chill myself out by cleaning and re-organizing the van top to bottom for a couple of hours … very restorative. \u00a0A little nap 9:30-ish, then over to the pools for a\u00a0final soak in the hot tub and a final shower\/shave before heading off into the desert. Exit Campland on the dot of the checkout time at noon. There’s an amazing amount of time on the morning that I just never see because I sleep in so routinely.<\/p>\n The whole day turned out to be just excellent. I\u2019m so glad I stuck around for a day in San Diego on my own.\u00a0 I was able to do the stuff I\u2019ve wanted to do but could not do with the family, namely take long nature hikes and dawdle at exactly the places I wanted to dawdle.<\/p>\n I started out doing things the family did that I liked. \u00a0Back to Bird Rock Coffee for Sunday paper and coffee with the La Jolla yuppies – perfect! \u00a0Walk a block and a half back to\u00a0Don Pedros for more cheap seafood tacos. \u00a0It was a between-meals time, so I lucked into the best table in the corner with the ocean view – perfect again!<\/p>\n Now for my fave outdoor thing to do in SD – which\u00a0a seven year old wouldn’t go for – a long, most of the afternoon hike through Torrey Pines State Park<\/strong>. \u00a0Park at Torrey Pines Golf Course to avoid the state parking fee, walk the extra 3\/4 along the driving range to the southeast edge of the park and get to it! \u00a0It’s on the bluffs with beautiful vistas of the ocean and the lagoon and the backcountry far to the east. \u00a0I stayed till almost sunset.<\/p>\n When I got back to the van it was pretty clear that I was not gonna make it to the lagoon for sunset, so I stopped at the northern edge of Del Mar, parked and hit the beach for the last few rays. \u00a0So it was pretty dark by the time I got to San Elijo Lagoon. \u00a0Moon-wise it is the time of my beloved waxing gibbous moon, so I went ahead and did the hike by moonlight – or should I say … a moonwalk<\/em>!?!\u00a0 A win-win, since I am sleeping in a parking lot tonight.<\/p>\n Well satisfied with my Really Big Day, it is time to hit the freeways and find my I-8 Walmart.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doheny State Beach is a really cool place in the daytime. \u00a0It’s in the middle of town, tucked in between the ocean and the I-5\/Amtrak corridor. \u00a0Come to think of it, we will spend five of our seven nights within … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1302sandiego"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Thursday<\/a><\/h3><\/p>\n
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