A cold rainy day in San Antonio

We planned a full day in San Antonio to check out the famous Riverwalk and the Alamo. Unfortunately, the weather didn't want to cooperate and the day was pretty much cold and rainy. None the less, the Alamo was a great history lesson and the Riverwalk was amazing. Six miles of the river have been developed with restaurants, shops and outdoor theaters lining the way. It felt a little like Venice. San Antonio is approximately half way on our trip east to Florida. We will turn in early tonight as we have more than 600 miles planned tomorrow as we head to Mobile, Alabama to check out Fairhope, the birthplace of Jimmy Buffet.

Back on the road

On Jan 15, we departed our Oceanside, CA home for the last 3 months. We spent two weeks with my parents in Phoenix, Az where we toughed out several major rainstorms that moved in off the Pacific. Today, on Jan 29 we began our journey east. We stopped in Tucson, where we toured the Sequoia National Park, a Titan 2 missile silo, the Pima Air and Space museum and the nations storage facility for out of service military planes. We watched many F-16's, F-15's and A-10 warthogs take off and blast away into the dessert sky. We will be traveling through New Mexico and Texas next. We plan to spend a couple days in San Antonio, Tx. Look for more picture posts, including Homer Simpson who has joined us for the trip back east.

More Dolphin watching at Dana Point

The weather was warm and the seas were calm, so we were off again to Dana Point to see if we could catch sight of some whales and dolphins. We saw many dolphins, but the whales were no where to be seen. The whales are working their way to Baja California from Alaska, but it looks like the majority have not made it down this far yet. We did see a pod of dolphins with an albino dolphin...a very rare sight.

Hiking in Torrey Pines

While we hear the midwest continues to be hit with cold weather and snow, today was sunny and warm in Southern California. We decided to go hiking at Torrey Pines State park, which is only a short drive from Oceanside. Torrey Pines is famous for its golf course which hosts professional golf tournaments. Torrey Pines is actually the name of very rare pine trees (seen in the photo) which manage to survive in coastal environment. The park is on the side of a hill and the trails wind down to the beach through the pines and through beautifully carved sandstone valleys. We hiked several trails enjoying the view and watching dolphins playing in the ocean. We even saw a whale spout in the distance. Our time in California is winding to a close as we will be starting to head east in mid January. The weather in southern California lived up to its reputation during our visit. I am still wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts in January.

The San Luis River finally makes it to the sea.

The mouth of the San Luis River is in front of our condo in Oceanside....but in the last two months the river stopped about 50 yards before Ocean. Even though the river was higher than the Ocean, the ocean had built up the sandy beach in front of the mouth of the river, blocking it from flowing to the sea. In the last few weeks, southern California has had it's first rain since summer and finally this week the river carved its way through the sand to the Ocean. What looked like a wide river, now is a narrow fast moving stream as the river has carved a curvy narrow path to the ocean and emptied the large pool of water in front of the condo.

Visit to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley

Down the road from Santa Barbara, is Simi Valley, home of the Reagan Library. The library is a beautiful facility located at the top of a hill which overlooks several valleys and the Ocean. Reagan chose this site just before leaving office. Many saw the library when Reagan passed away. He is buried here. The library includes a section of the Berlin Wall, the history of Ron and Nancy Reagan, and the Airforce One that Reagan used during his term in Office. I highly recommend visiting this library. It is a very moving experience and a fitting tribute to this great President.

Visiting the home of "Psych" ................ (Santa Barbara)

We drove down scenic Highway 101 from San Jose, stopping in Santa Barbara. Marlene is a fan of the TV show "Psych" which is set in Santa Barbara, so she was anxious to see if she could recognize any landmarks seen in the show. Santa Barbara has a huge pier with parking and shopping at the end of the pier. We were surprised to see many oil platforms in the waters off the coast of Santa Barbara. We both thought that oil platforms in California were located much further offshore, out of site from land.