San Diego Sightseeing!

We spent several days touring and sightseeing in the San Diego area. On one sunny Sunday afternoon, we were treated to an outdoor pipe organ concert in Balboa Park. The organ has over 4,500 pipes and produced some spectacular sounds. It was a wonderful experience and we highly recommend it to anyone visiting the San Diego area.



A few days later we took a tour of the waterfront area by riding on the "SEAL". It was a bus for about a third of the trip, then drove into the waters of the San Diego Bay for a tour of the harbor area with a waterseye view. We saw a lot of seabirds and sea lions sunning themselves on the anchovie baitboxes floating just offshore.



A different day found us atop one of the San Diego sightseeing double-decker buses that are commonly seen in London. While it was a bit windy up on top, we enjoyed the unimpeded views of the city as well as the history lesson provided by the tour guides. Our adventure began and ended in the Old Town area of San Diego - a state historical park. We wound up through the hills into residential areas, through Balboa Park, then down to the waterfront area and the downtown business district. It was a great tour.

We leave on Sunday with our kids and their spouses for our cruise down the Mexican Riviera so we will be out of touch for awhile, although we might have sporadic internet access. We are so excited to have the kids experience cruising. We hope they like it as much as we do.

On April 1st, we expect to be heading back up the highway towards home in the RV. It will probably take us a week or more, as we adhere to the motto of "two hundred miles a day on the road in an RV is good". Hope to see you all soon.

Watch Out LPGA!

After taking just one lesson from friend (and golf instructor) Ron Mountain, Sandy and Tim talked Diane into playing in the RV Resort's weekly golf outing at the National City Golf Course. Not only did Diane manage to make par on the ninth hole, but she walked away with the prize money for being closest to the pin on her drive on the fifth hole. Regrettably Ron had to fly home earlier in the week to WORK, and wasn't able to share in his student's success. It might be time for Tim to find a new sport if Diane is going to keep playing like this.

The two of us went out yesterday and played the same nine hole course so Diane could learn what a truly frustrating game golf is, and Tim managed to get two pars - a personal record for him

Things To Do In San Diego!

We have been enjoying our time here in San Diego. With friends Ron and Sandy Mountain, we headed out to Silver Strand State Beach on a recent evening for appetizers and to watch the beautiful sunset. Regrettably, the batteries went down in our camera so, once again we didn't get to capture the view we had hoped for. Guess it is just time to replace all of our "rechargeable" batteries.

Diane and Tim also spent several hours touring the USS Midway - a retired U. S. Navy aircraft carrier that is now used as a floating museum. It was a nostalgic trip for Tim as he was reliving his short Navy stint, although he served his four years without ever setting foot aboard a ship. He
did enjoy looking at the Vietnam era aircraft that
were aboard the carrier. The photo to the right was just one of the amazing compartments on the ship that showed many of the control valves, temperature controls, and thousands of knobs and buttons that were used to keep the ship afloat and moving forward. The audio tour of the ship was very informative and was responsible for the objects hanging around our necks in the picture.

Tim also visited many of his friends at Union Bank here in San Diego and we very much enjoyed a wonderful dinner with friend, Di Fibiger. Di has promised to visit us in Oregon in June - a promise that we hope she will honor.

We continue to be amazed at how easy it is to navigate around the city of San Diego. The freeway system makes good sense and you can move around here faster than you can in the Portland area.

We attended a Pizza/Karaoke party one evening here at the Chula Vista RV Park. It was a fun event and we met several new people that we enjoyed chatting with. RVers are always easy to get to know and, if you decide you don't like them, chances are that you won't run into them again any time soon. You can easily put several hundred miles between you and them.

Getting around San Diego!

Here is a picture of our site as well as a picture of the bay behind us. We have plenty of room and a picnic table where we can sit and see the bay. This is the park that Sam loves to visit. There is a long walkway that is available to the public and, unlike a lot of other San Diego areas, dogs are welcome.

We have been surprised to find out what an easy city San Diego is to navigate. The freeways are laid out logically and it doesn't seem to take very long to get anywhere. We haven't hit any serious rush hour traffic in any of our travels, nor have we gotten lost anywhere.


Our friends Ron and Sandy Mountain from Salem are here now and we have been doing much running around with them. Ron's daughter, Jennifer, is the Assistant Coach for the Gonzaga University women's basketball team. The team is playing for the Western Conference Championship so we have been attending her games at the University of San Diego. What a gorgeous campus this is. The girls have won their first two games and will play tomorrow for the championship. If they win tomorrow, they will receive a berth in the NCAA women's tournament. We spent so many hours in gyms with Kristen playing volleyball in high school, that this seems like deja vu but with a different sport.

Ron is also a golf coach and he spent Thursday morning giving Diane lessons. The session was quite intense and now she needs to find time to practice what she learned. Tim, Ron, and Sandy joined a golf tournament from the park and played at the National City Golf Course. This is an executive course that was quite challenging. Of course, Ron made it look easy as Tim and Sandy struggled.

We added up our days in the coach today and it is hard to believe that we have spent 263 nights on the road since we purchased the RV in 2004. It is amazing how comfortable we are living in such close quarters. Sam even has his own spot under the vanity. He enjoys it so much he often goes to bed early at night leaving us to wonder where he went.

There are many ducks in this area and we have had our share of duck droppings in our RV spot. However, today Tim was sitting outside reading the paper and I think it was the bird of paradise dropped some white stuff on his shirt. He was not a happy camper.

Chula Vista RV Resort

It was with a great deal of sadness that we left all our friends and the many amenities of the Golden Village Palms RV Park. After a very short travel day, we arrived at the Chula Vista RV Resort where we will spend the month of March. This is a very nice park and marina. Boy, there are some really nice yachts in the slips. Our site backs up to a view of San Diego Bay. Today is a beautiful day with temperatures in the 70's.

Sam is excited as there is a large park right behind us with lots of new smells and large picnic areas where people possibly may have dropped some food that he needs to find. There are many places to walk around here without a significant amount of traffic so he will be glad to get more exercise than he has been getting. There is no pool volleyball here to distract his owners so they can pay more attention to him.

Sam stayed in the coach for his afternoon nap while the two of us drove to the Embarcadero for a nice stroll. We watched the loading of the Dawn Princess before she left on her Mexican Riviera voyage. In three weeks we will board the same ship with our adult children and their spouses to enjoy the same cruise. This will be a highlight of our whole adventure.

From Palm Springs to Washington, DC

We took a trip to the Palm Springs area to visit with friends, George & Myrna Beeman. They were staying in a condo in the PS area on what has become an annual pilgrimage for them. The four of us did some walking around the downtown area before taking in the wonderful "Palm Springs Follies" in the historic Plaza Theatre. The show was a fabulous return to the Tin Pan Alley days, complete with showgirls and guys from the era. The youngest showgirl was 61 years old with the oldest being 84 years young. It was amazing to learn they do nine shows each week during the performing season. The women looked terrific and the men looked like they had lots of makeup on. It was a wonderful, fun day spent with good friends.

Following the performance, Diane headed out from Palm Springs airport to return to Portland for one day, before flying to Washington, DC to join daughter Kristen on a special tour of the White House and the Capitol Building. The trip home first was to get her grandkid fix with the ones that were available, to have lunch with some of her Ya-Ya friends and to gather some warm clothes for the east coast cold spell. Tim and Sam stayed in Hemet to enjoy a few days of bachelor life. Both of them, however, are much happier when mom is home.

While Diane's time in DC was close to a whirlwind tour, she was able to cross one item off her "bucket list". She has always wanted to visit inside the White House and the Capitol Building and, thanks to Kristen and her boss,who were there on official business, she got the insiders look at both.

We are sorry that there are no pictures to accompany this blog entry, but a technical problem with our camera appears to have wiped out the memory card. We haven't totally given up hope as yet as we plan to take the card to an authorized factory repair shop that we located in San Diego to see if the images can be recovered.

It is hard to believe that our time here at Golden Village Palms is coming to an end. We will be moving on Saturday, March 1, to Chula Vista RV Resort and Marina, in near San Diego, CA. Since Diane came back to town on Tuesday, the weather here has been spectacular. Temps in the 70's during the day, but still getting very cool at night. The skies up here are so clear that we enjoy seeing all the stars in the universe. Regrettably we were clouded over for the most recent lunar eclipse. We certainly are planning to return here next year as we have enjoyed this park and the people so much.

We're still here!

Wow! Has it really been 11 days since our last blog update? Things are just happening way too fast for us. Just to keep us humble, the weather has taken a stormy turn and we have had several days of rain. The weather at home seems to be better than here. No opportunity for pool volleyball or golf. However, we have still managed to stay busy with games, dances, and visitors.

Randy and Karen Wersch from Kamloops, British Columbia were in town for a weekend as they complete a loop from BC to the Yuma, Arizona area, then over to the coast route to make their return trip home. Randy is a cousin of Diane and Joyce. We visited them for a wonderful, adventurous week at their cabin on East Berriere Lake in BC a few years ago. They are traveling by car, rather than by RV and with one of the new navigation systems that takes all the fun out of getting lost. Where is the spirit of adventure?

Also, Bob and Betty Trappe made the drive from Borrego Springs to Hemet to visit us and tour the grounds of the Golden Village Palms RV Resort. We are trying to convince Bob to bring his motorhome here next year. He says a condo in the middle of the desert is more his style. It turns out that Bob and brother-in-law Jim West, have many common friends that also overlap with a number of Tim's clients and bank contacts. We spent quite a while just saying "What ever happened to .......?" After a great visit and a wonderful lunch, Bob and Betty returned to their desert condo.

On these overcast days, we really get homesick. Since we have now been away from home for over a month and a half, we miss seeing our kids and grandkids. Although the telephone and email are great ways to communicate, nothing beats a good old-fashioned hug. We miss you all! That also goes for our friends as well.