Mar 23-28 -- San Diego & Los Angeles, CA

On Thursday, Mar 23rd, we left the desert and drove through the San Bernadino & Santa Rosa mountains on our way to San Diego. Remember, when possible, we take the longer and more scenic way as opposed to the quicker interstates & freeways. It was really a very pretty drive.

In San Diego, we stayed in a small guest house/cottage in the North Park section of the city which we found through Airbnb (our son, Kelan's, girlfriend works for Airbnb). From there we could walk to a number of restaurants & bars (which we did the first evening) and it was a short Uber ride from others areas, like the Little Italy neighborhood (where we went the next night). The place we stayed was also just a mile or so walk from the San Diego Zoo (we walked there but were misdirected and the walk over was more like 2-1/2 miles!). That was the first time we've been to a zoo in a long time!

On Saturday we went down to the harbor area and walked around for a few hours. We saw but didn't tour the USS Midway aircraft carrier/museum or any of the other maritime museums at the harbor - just not enough time for everything. We then drove over to Point Loma, on the peninsula. There's a monument there to Juan Cabrillo, the Spanish explorer who first navigated the west coast of California and made landfall at a point near where the current naval installation is today.

On Sunday, we made our way down to Balboa Park where we took in an organ recital, strolled through the Spanish Market, and checked out some of the "nation" homes in the park (built for the 1935-36 California Pacific International Exposition). Unfortunately, it was mid-afternoon until we made our way there and most of the museums, etc closed at 5pm so we really didn't have nearly enough time to explore the park which is home to 17 museums, the zoo, and a number of gardens. Every Sunday afternoon there is a free organ recital on one of the world's largest outdoor pipe organs.

Spreckel's Organ at Balboa Park

Japanese Tea Garden at Balboa Park

Balboa Park

Museum of Man, Balboa Park

On Monday, on our way to Los Angeles, we stopped off at La Jolla cove, just north of San Diego. We had a very close encounter with the sea lions that literally line the beach and rocks there. Probably not the best idea but you can get within feet of the sea lions as they sun themselves. I kept looking around to make sure we didn't get caught in bad spot with a sea lion on the move! One cove down, there were harbor seals but they had this cove closed off to people.

Sea Lions at La Jolla Cove

Sea Lions at La Jolla

As close as you're ever going to

want to get to a wild sea lion!

We then drove up the coast to Los Angeles for a short stay.  Some of the drive was scenic but in a number of cases you were just too far off the coast. Drove through a number of beach-towns on the way, though, like Carlsbad and Oceanside. We got to our hotel on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood around dark, exhausted from dealing with the heavy Southern California/LA freeway traffic. Why anybody would want to live there and put up with that daily is beyond me!

On Tuesday the 28th, we walked up to Grauman's Chinese Theater along the Hollywood "Walk of Fame". We didn't realize it but the walk of fame stretches for blocks on both sides of Hollywood Blvd & Vine St - 2600 stars along 18 blocks. We walked several blocks with our faces pointed dwon (like all the other tourists) announcing all the names of stars we recognized. We then went on a hop-on/hop-off tour bus. We figured this was better than trying to drive around to the different locales and have to deal with traffic and parking. It worked out pretty well. We got to see Beverly Hills & Rodeo Drive, Wilshire Blvd, Sunset "strip", Santa Monica (and the pier, where we spent an hour or so). We went to Universal Studios CityWalk in the evening - if you've been to the one in Orlando this is similar (though I liked the Orlando one better). On Wednesday the 29th, before leaving the LA area, we drove over to Venice Beach where we spent a couple hours taking in the sights.

From there, we headed north along the coast to our next stop, Morro Bay.

That's all for now ..... Dan