Here are some highlights from the last two weeks. We left Bolsa Chica State Park (in Huntington Beach, California), on the 16th and went south to Carlsbad State Park in San Diego County. We were going to stay there for two weeks, but left after three days. The plan was to spend Christmas with Cheryl's dad and step-mom, Shirley, but it turned out to be too long of a drive to his house to do on a daily basis. We moved to an RV park closer.
Carlsbad has a nice oceanfront park although it is on a bluff with 122 steps down to the beach. The bluff provides a good view of the ocean and we often saw dolphins and sea lions. We decorated a 5' Christmas tree in our trailer and discovered that the typical wire hooks are not designed for travel. Every time we moved the trailer we had to rehang the ornaments.
We spent Christmas week on Mission Bay in San Diego at Campland on the Bay RV Park. Campland is a real nice park with several organized activities. The kids were constantly checking the park calendar for kickball, baseball, field hockey, candy bar bingo and other activities.
For three days around Christmas we parked at Cheryl's dad's house so we wouldn't have to drive home at night. We had a really nice time, including several great dinners and breakfasts. The kids spent most of one day building a Christmas candy house. Max says he's going to write about it in his journal and include a photo or two. Cheryl's daughter, Bridget and granddaughter, Kayce, flew down from Everett and spent Christmas with us as well. While most of the Seattle locals were talking about the cold weather, Bridget was very happy to get off the plane in sunny San Diego
The 29th of December was an especially busy day. We started the day by going to see the Holiday Bowl Parade. It is held along the waterfront in San Diego. We sat on the curb in front of the Star of India, a 100+ year old sailing ship docked at San Diego's Maritime Museum. This parade had several large balloon characters like the ones in Macy's parade. We thought that the Cat-in-the-Hat was the largest. Our dog Cocoa went with us and she was not amused by these large creatures in the sky. She shook like a leaf the entire time and tried to hide under our lawn chairs. She is becoming more metropolitan as time goes on, but still enjoys a cool dip in a lake or running on a country trail more than the city streets.
After the parade we raced back to Campland to pack up our trailer. After packing, we drove Bridget to Cheryl's dad's place so that he could deliver her to the airport for her trip back home the next morning. Then we raced to the airport to pick up Cheryl's mom. She came down from Everett to join us for the Tournament of Roses Parade. We met her plane at the airport at 5:00 PM and headed north to L.A so that we would be close to the parade route and claim a front row spot. By the time we parked for the night it was 10:30 p.m. It is amazing how busy our days can be.
The whole parade experience can be found on our Field Trips and Sites page. In short, we staked out a place on the sidewalk at 11:00 a.m. the morning before the parade. The Tournament of Roses Parade is excellent! Seeing the floats on television is no substitute for seeing them first hand. The 24 hour party on the street is another unique experience. We met several interesting people who became good friends. We spent 24 hours with them sharing food and drink and devising strategies to protect our seating and sleeping area on the street.
One unfortunate incident though, after dropping Cheryl and the kids off along the parade route and unhitching our trailer in a reserved lot one block of the pararde route, I had to race across Los Angeles to take Cheryl's mom back to the airport. She had no more than arrived when a family emergency required her immediate return to Everett. So now we are planning on doing the parade again next year so she can join us. Every one should come on down and we'll have a big party!
After the parade we thought we'd go to Santa Barbara, but Ed was tired from being up all night. Instead we went to an RV park near the Six Flags amusement park in Valencia, California, just 45 minutes from the parade route. We stayed there a couple of days. We rested and road a few roller coasters.
Bridget, our daughter who had just flown back north, left us a message that she had to fly to Las Vegas for a funeral. So instead of going west to Santa Barbara, we decided to go east to Las Vegas.
As we were leaving the RV park we stopped to talk with a man that had a trailer similar to ours with Washington plates. It turned out that he lived just miles from our house on Lake Goodwin and his last day of work was the 30th of October; the same day as Ed's last day at Boeing. We ended up visiting for a while then hit the road.
Ed had mentioned that the rear-end seemed to have a little slop in it and sure enough it did. When it started growling loudly we stopped to check it. Ed said we were going no farther until we got it fixed. As it was almost dusk, we thought we'd find a store parking lot to stay in for the night. Unfortunately, we had stopped in a spot where we could not turn around. We had three choices, 1) get on the freeway going south, 2) get on the freeway going north, 3) cross the freeway down a small road with no obvious place to turn around. Since the freeway was not a good option, we went straight to find a place to turn around.
As we drove by many ranch style house with fenced front yards, our options waned. Ed said we could always back all the way out. We were driving slowly and Ed stopped to let a truck and horse trailer pass. The driver stopped and his wife asked if we were lost. We briefly explained our situation and they offered to let us park by their horse stables, so we followed them down the street.
The road turned to gravel as it crossed a flood wash that flows during heavy rains. It then turned and went up the flood wash and crossed under a narrow train tressle. The rear end was making terrible noises as we drove slowly over the bumps in the road. We went another quarter mile on a paved road that doubled as a storm wash and saw that there was a big old oak tree growing right in the middle of the road. We followed these nice folks to the house and maneuvered the trailer into a beautiful place under two giant oak trees.
After unhitching the trailer and briefly meeting and thanking our hosts, Ian and Carol, Ed looked over the truck. Ian told Ed that his neighbor works on cars and that he might have the tool that we needed. Ian walked to the neighbor's house to check, and when he came back, he not only had the tool, but a story that was unbelievable! He told us that his neighbors were the family that we had just spent 24 hours with on the sidewalk at the Rose Parade!!
Later that night, Barb, Kelly and Suzy, (our Parade friends), came over to say hello, (they were just as shocked as we were). We all laughed and talked for a long time that evening with our new friends and our parade buddies. We kept asking each other what the odds of this coincidence could be. One million people at the parade and a million places to break down?. This turned out to be a wonderful, memorable experience.
Next we journey on south to Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur, California. We were quite surprised to find that Big Sur is a very tiny community, not the large artist and "free-spirit" center that Cheryl had always wanted to visit in the late 60's. The camping area in the state park follows a shallow river for a mile into large redwoods. We measured one tree having a circumference or 21 feet, but the next day found another with a 32 foot circumference. We learned a lot talking with Harvey, an old fella that staffed the nature center. He is very knowledgeable and had many display's of plant and animal life from this area. A day trip 25 miles north to Monterey was consumed mostly by the Monterey Aquarium. We did take the time to enjoy an excellent Sunday brunch a El Torito's and the kids enjoyed a spectacular community playground called the "Dennnis the Menace Playground." We went to a couple of beaches in the area near Big Sur and were very impressed with the rocky, wild coastline. It was unlike any beach that we'd experienced before in Washington State or Southern California. Click here for a few of the pictures we took.
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