Our June 2018 San Diego Road Trip

San Diego Road Trip

Sunday June 10, 2018 

This is our first big road trip in at least 10 years, and our first in our 2018 Volvo XC-90.  Ben’s brother, Carl, offered his San Diego condo for us to use while he had his wife, Catherine, were on a British Isles and Norway Cruise.  We didn’t need a better excuse to spend a weekend in San Diego than that.  The weather on Whidbey Island had been improving, leaving the long dreary winter weather behind, but we were looking forward to some good old fashion California sunshine.  

Our first leg of the trip was to spend the night with Janet’s brother, Jack, and his wife, Sharon, in Onalaska.  We arrived in Onalaska that evening and took Jack and Sharon to dinner at Casa Ramos, which was a pretty decent Mexican chain restaurant.  Jack introduced us to Modelo Negro beer, a dark Mexican beer that is very good with food, sweet and refreshing.  Sharon got to wear a birthday mariachi sombrero and had happy bday Sung to her at the end of the meal. 

Sharon recommended we shut our suitcases in a bathroom to prevent one of their cats, Apollo, who has a reputation as a cat sometimes possessed by Satan himself, from marking our belongings as his.  He had taken an eye out of another cat Blackie, that they also have.  

Jack and Sharon have a complex of log structures we call “Jack City” with amazing ponds and gardens.  It is always fun to visit, and spend a night in the log house they built from scratch.  

Monday June 11, 2018

Sharon and Jack saw us off with a full breakfast and garden tour.  We spent the day driving down I-5, stopping at the Apple store in Washington Square, where we traded in two old iPads that were running short of memory, for a new model with much more memory space for Janet’s games.  We also did some sales tax free shopping at the Wilsonville Costco.  The traffic through northern Oregon on I-5 wasn’t too bad during the off peak times we were traveling.  

Driving the long stretches of highway in our new XC-90 is pretty easy.  The seats are much more comfortable than even first class airline seats, and these even have cooling to keep our backsides comfortable during hot stretches.  This car also has something called Pilot Assist, that includes adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, so the car can pretty much drive itself, but you have to keep your hands on the wheel and provide continuous supervision.  It tests you periodically, and if you aren’t paying attention to the road, it will disconnect within 30 seconds.  It’s not like the Tesla autopilot that can’t seem to avoid parked fire engines or concrete median dividers when their drivers are playing video games instead of driving.  The Volvo Pilot assist really takes a great deal of the burden of driving in freeway stop and go traffic, so it is much less fatiguing.  

We had dinner at Shari’s in Woodburn Oregon because Janet had coupons for a 2 for $25 special that included two select dinners with a shared appetizer and pie.  The best part was the pie, of course.  Janet especially enjoyed her peanut butter cream pie.  Ben had the Marion berry pie.

We checked into a Comfort Inn in Ashland Oregon shortly after dark.  Unfortunately, the only rooms they had were in a downstairs area only accessible by a narrow staircase.  That made toting our suitcases and ice chest a bit of a struggle.  However, the room was clean, comfortable, spacious and well appointed, with a good AC unit with a automatic thermostat on the fan.  There was also a refrigerator freezer and microwave.  We were bringing down some frozen blocks of crab meat for delivery to family in California, so having a freezer was very handy.  

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Breakfast at the Comfort Inn included scrambled eggs, sausage patties, and a surprise- Tater Tots!  They also had the usual waffle maker, cereals, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, pastries and toast.  It was a pretty good free breakfast spread.  Driving down I-5 through northern California was scenic.  The hillsides were still green and the volcanic scenery around Mount Shasta was interesting.  Mount Shasta was particularly spectacular, looming over the countryside big as, well- a Mountain.  Shasta Lake seemed to have a lot of water in it compared with some of the times in the past when we have driven by it.  

Driving through the Sacramento valley, it was impressive to see all the agriculture, and the scale of it.  We knew we had arrived in California for real when we stopped for lunch at the In-N-Out Burger in Woodland along with our usual Costco gasoline and rest stop.  They do manage to prepare a very fresh and appealing hamburger that is worth the stop.  We managed to arrive at Ben’s sister Eileen’s house just as everyone was arriving home after work.  Ben’s niece Abby is staying with Eileen during the summer, doing an internship in the area.   We hosted a family dinner at Chef Chu’s restaurant in Sunnyvale where we met up with Ben’s Sister-in-Law Sharlene, her daughter Anne, Eileen, her husband Tony, and son’s Alex and Coby. Ben’s newlywed nephew Peter and his wife Sammantha, who both recently started working for Apple were also able to be there.  It was fun to see everyone and to have some good Chinese food. 

We spent the night at Ben’s brother Dave’s house.  Dave and Sharlene both work at small start-up companies with very demanding jobs, but somehow manage to raise their two daughters Anne and Ellen into very smart and charming scholar athletes.  Ellen was scheduled to take her driving test the next day.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Dave and Sharlene saw us off with a nice breakfast and directions to the new Apple Campus, where we got to tour the visitor center and get a glimpse of the circular building known as the mother ship because it looks like a giant UFO landed in Cupertino.  

We left the Bay Area and crossed the state from West to the East to go from Highway 101 to I-5, back in the Central Valley.  On the way, we drove around an enormous inland lake, the San Luis Reservoir, which we have never seen before.  The road between Highway 101 and I-5 was dotted with fruit and vegetable stands.  Some were advertising avocados 10 for $1.  We just had to stop and check that out, and found they had tiny avocados, no bigger than plums, which were most likely just pit, and obviously used primarily to bait travelers into stopping.  Well it worked on us.  As we drove down the Central Valley, there were signs mounted on big field wagons pointing out the state’s water problems.  They were advocating building more dam storage with slogans like “Is growing food wasting water?  No Water means No Jobs in the Valley”.  Gone are the days of sprinkler irrigations.  Everything appears to be done with drip irrigations techniques now.  It was interesting to see the various crops that we could recognize, including olives, pistachios and tangerines.  

We spent the rest of the day driving down to San Diego, spending  a great deal of time crawling through stop and go freeway traffic through Los Angeles.  It’s easy to underestimate  the size of Los Angeles and how bad the traffic can be.  Again, the Volvo Pilot Assist made the ordeal much more tolerable than it might have been, especially if you had to drive a car with a manual transmission through that mess. 

We tried to stop at a Chinese restaurant along our route with good Yelp reviews called the Bamboo Garden, but it was in a dicey part of Los Angeles, and when we pulled up, it looked like it was closed.  The windows were boarded up with plywood. Then we saw a tiny sign on the door saying “Take out Only”.  We went inside and saw that the dining room had been walled off completely, leaving only a narrow corridor leading to a small window.  It was reminiscent of Harold’s Fried Chicken in Chicago.  The woman at the window explained that ever since the restaurant was ransacked during the Rodney King riots, they have never reopened the dining room, and operate strictly on a cash only take-out business.  They have been in business for over 40  years in that location,  but now are living in a post-apocalyptic neighborhood.  A sad sign of the times. Since we travel nearly cashless, we passed on this, and hit the road again.

We arrived in San Diego just as night was falling.  Carl’s condo is right downtown in the Gaslamp district, just a couple of blocks from the waterfront Convention Center.  It took us a while to figure out how to use the parking garage and elevators, which rely on an RFID key fob for access, but we made it.  The night we arrived, there were fireworks going off on the waterfront and loud music in the streets.  Fortunately, they do have a noise regulation that shuts down the music after 10:30PM.  

Thursday, June 14, 2018

It was just a short walk from Carl’s condo to The Broken Yolk, a great breakfast place.  We had also eaten breakfast in another Broken Yolk franchise in Chicago near Millennium Park when we were there for Ciara’s graduation.  This menu had a few California specialties, most featuring real avocados.  We then hopped into the car for the 15 minute drive to the San Diego Zoo.  We bought memberships for two adults, which cost about the same as two individual single day park admissions, but were good for a year, and included not only the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park, but also included the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, which was about 40 minutes to the north in the countryside.  The zoo is quite massive, so we figured it would take a few days to really see.  This first day, we started by watching the live programs that occur at stages situated around the park, and they were scheduled so that you had to work your way around the park, sprinting from one stage to the next.  We gave up on that strategy after the 3rd show because it was simply too much to run around the zoo for the programs that they had, and just  started exploring and enjoying the exhibits.  They have a tremendous number of aviaries scattered throughout the zoo with a large variety of birds.  We got to the far north end of the zoo where the polar bears and reindeer are, and worked our way back to the entrance near the Koalas near closing time.  We were pretty exhausted before 5pm and headed back to the condo to rest up and then explore the neighborhood, which was one restaurant and bar after the next.  We ended up at the Dubliner, an Irish Pub where they had Guinness on tap for $4.00 and half priced appetizers for dinner.  We ended up trying their Scotch eggs, which are hard boiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat and then deep fried.  We also had Irish nachos, which were basically loaded french fries, and onion rings.  We were pretty stuffed and buzzed after that and ready for bed.

Friday, June 15, 2018

We opted for homemade oatmeal in the condo for a quick breakfast before heading north to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.  Traffic was light heading out of the city.  We noticed a lot of homeless people packing up their sleeping bags and belongings as we headed out of downtown.  There are also a lot of rental bicycles and scooters around downtown, but it appears that some of the homeless have figured out how to hijack some of the rental bikes for free transportation.  It is notable how many of these homeless talk to themselves in rather heated conversations as they work their way across the street.  They invariably wait until you have a green light, and then they decide to step out in front of your car to stop traffic.  Numerically, there are probably more homeless in San Diego than on the streets of Seattle, but you don’t have tent cities all over the place because the weather is so much better, you don’t need a tent, or shelter, aside from a doorway to sleep in overnight. San Diego seems to do a decent job of keeping the streets and sidewalks clean, at least in the Gaslamp district.

The drive out to the Safari Park took us past a Costco and In-N-Out, so our dinner plans were set.  There is a huge parking lot at the Safari park, but everyone has to pay $15 to park.  That must be a major source of revenue for the park since there is no way to park for free and walk into the park unless you are willing to walk a few miles.  The Safari Park is quite different than the main zoo.  It is newer and features a large open Savannah area where a tram drives you by the animals.  Most are still in some kind of enclosure, but there are open areas where animals can intermingle.  The nicest exhibit was their Australian exhibit, where you enter an enclosure, and have kangaroos, ducks and wallabies intermingling among themselves and the zoo guests.  It was very well done.  There was also a large Bonsai collection.  The most unusual animal was the male cassowary, a cross between an emu and dinosaur, that was nearly hidden behind a gift shop past the Australia exhibit.  We also spent time watching the family of gorillas they have there.  It is amazing how huge the fully grown adults are.  There was also a cute little one.  One of the more unique programs they have is they let their cheetah run at full speed down a track, chasing a stuffed zebra doll pulled on a line.  We got to see the cheetah run twice, from different angles, but you have to watch carefully because that cheetah can fly.  They house the cheetah with two companion dogs, who have become best animal buddies.  We had managed to see most of the park and exhibits by late afternoon and it was a hot sunny day.  We were pretty tired, and appreciative of the ice cold soda pop at the In-N-Out to revive us for the trip home.  We did gas up and picked up some groceries for Carl’s condo at Costco.  

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Our mission today was to hit the San Diego Zoo early, so we arrived in time to see the zoo opening, which is heralded by the release of a flight of colorful Macaws from an elevated platform.  This turned out to be an overcast and cooler day, so it was more comfortable, and we headed straight for the Giant Panda’s right off the start, following another family that knew the way.  We were treated to a very entertaining Panda munching on bamboo at the very front of her enclosure, as she seemed to enjoy watching us passing in front of her enclosure like a giant TV screen.  She was no more than 20ft from us, so it was a very up close and intimate Panda viewing experience.  Her neighbor, a more rambunctious young male, was climbing around in the tree structures of his enclosure, showing off his dexterity in the branches.  The other big treat was to see a pair of young Amur Leopard cubs chasing and tumbling around in their enclosure just past the Giant Panda exhibit.  They were just like big kittens, having a great time, sometimes at the expense of their Mom, whom they would ambush as she made her rounds.  We managed to see the rest of the zoo, which we had missed on the first day, including a large exhibit of Galapagos tortoises. After leaving the zoo, we did walk around Balboa Park a bit before heading home to a Happy Hour at a Mexican restaurant and bar called La Puerta for half price beer and appetizers.  The appetizers were a filling meal, but you had to get in early to get a seat in the bar because the La Puerta is a very popular happy hour, usually with a line out the door.  The La Puerta and Dubliner were both not even a 5 minute walk from Carl’s condo.  I can see how happy hours can become a habit around here.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Today was to be a more relaxing day, starting with a 15 minute drive to Coronado beach for a nice walk up and down the beach, which features sand that glistens gold because of flecks of mica in the sand.  It was fun seeing all the families with small kids having a great time splashing around in the surf.  Ben saw a sea lion that was taking a nap on the beach just past the Del Coronado’s beach, protected by a ring of traffic cones and wildlife officers standing guard.  The lifeguards have a variety of rescue vehicles ranging from UTV’s, small 4WD pickups, ATV’s and jet skis all painted in colorful Baywatch colors.  It was nice to be able to find free parking relatively close to the beach as well.  The beach has nice shower and bathroom facilities.  

Many of the Gaslamp district Bars don’t have happy hours on Sundays, but we found one just across the street from Carl’s condo called Patron’s Corner, for a drink and appetizers for our dinner.  The food was delicious, but with smaller portions than La Puerta’s, so we would have to rank it a bit lower, but they did have their happy hour 7 days a week, which goes in their favor because La Puerta didn’t have a happy hour on Sunday.  After our early happy hour dinner, we walked up to the San Diego Civic Auditorium, where Carl had tickets for the touring Broadway show of “School of Rock”.  The seats were up on the upper balcony, but we did have an unobstructed view of the stage and the acoustics were excellent.  The talent of the kids in the show was amazing, and it was fun to be able to see a live Broadway show within easy walking distance from the condo.  This was the last show of their San Diego stop, so there were semi-trailers ready to pack out the show as we left the theatre.  

Monday, June 18, 2018

San Diego’s Old Town State Park was our destination this morning.  We had visited it many years ago during one of Ben’s Urology conventions, but it was nice to revisit it.  The landscaping in parts is full of spectacular succulents.  We spent the most time looking through the livery museum where they had a great exhibit on freight convoys with teams of oxen, mules and horses.  They explained some of the technological advances in coachwork that made passenger and freight travel across the developing west possible.  We were all excited about the advertised Taco Tuesday happy hours until a gal at an olive oil tasting bar pointed out to us that it was MONDAY, not TUESDAY.  How easy it is to loose track of the time when you’re retired. We started walking up to the Presidio museum, but after getting to the base of the hill, we turned around and got the car to drive to the top of the hill where the Museum was.  The curator on site was very eager to share some secrets of the site, which included the footprints of the original fortification below the parking lot, two sculptures, and a large cross constructed with adobe bricks from the original fortification, also below the parking lot.  The museum was free and contained exhibits detailing the earliest days of San Diego’s colonization and diversion of the San Diego river.  

We hit the La Puerta happy hour for an early dinner, and then went back to the zoo because they had just started “Zoo Nights”, where they extend their hours until 8PM.  We were hoping to see more active nocturnal animals. When we got there, we saw the Koalas, who seemed to be a little more awake in their fake trees, and we could see many more faces, but even an “active” koala looks like it’s a stuffed animal doll.  The Giant Pandas had changed roles with the female taking a nap, and the male sprawled at the front of his enclosure enjoying a meal of bamboo.  It is fascinating to watch the pandas work the bamboo with their paws and teeth.  They like to eat the woody main stalks of the bamboo, rather than the leaves.  The red panda was also awake and climbing about in his tree- another very cute animal that was previously asleep.  The Amur leopard cubs were just as rambunctious as they were in the morning.  Hard to imagine keeping up with those cubs.  It’s a good thing the mom had two, to keep each other busy.

We took the sky gondola back to the park entrance and watched the closing parade “Jambo” working its way across the front of the zoo.  They had live musicians in a small marching band accompanying dancers in costumes reminiscent of the Lion King, doing a dance program.  We got off the gondola just in time to watch their performance in a small plaza in front of the reptile house.  So we got to see the zoo open with the Macaw free flight and see the zoo close with their Jambo parade.  

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Move out day. We did laundry and cleaned up Carl’s condo before we hit the road.  Fortunately, leaving earlier meant missing the morning and afternoon rush hours around Los Angeles, so we only had brief periods of stop and go traffic, cruising through the LA freeways at freeway speeds.  We spent the night in a Comfort Inn in Tulare, a seemingly up and coming town in the Central valley with beautiful wide streets and new businesses that seemed to be thriving.  Unfortunately, this Comfort Inn also had no elevator, and our rooms were up on the second floor, so we had to climb stairs with our suitcases and ice chest again.  The gal at the desk said they were in the process of installing an elevator, but that would not be completed until January.  The room was spacious, well appointed, and had a very comfortable bed and quiet AC.  We had dinner at a small family owned Mexican restaurant with good Yelp reviews, but it was just so-so.  We drove by a Jalisco Taco Truck on the way back to the hotel, and picked up a few street tacos that were pretty good and cheap.  

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

We drove into the western foothills of the Central Valley as we worked our way northwest to the east entrance of Pinnacles National Park.  There are a lot of cattle and horse ranches amongst the rolling hills and chaparral forest in the foot hills that is quite a different scenery from the agricultural floor of the Central valley.  At one point, Ben spotted a California Condor hop off a fencepost to pick at some road kill.  Janet bought her lifetime Senior National Parks Pass, and we did a 2 mile loop hike to a small reservoir and talus caves.  It was a hot day, expected to reach 100 degrees, but it was just 90 when we did the hike.  Still, it was a hot and dusty hike.  The squirrels at the reservoir have evolved into little beggars to coax food from passing hikers.  There are lots of places for people to rock climb, but overall, the Pinnacles was a bit of a disappointment after having seen Bryce Canyon, and Red Rocks Canyons.  While there is some interesting geology related to the San Andreas fault at the Pinnacles, the scenery was just not spectacular enough to justify the long drive from San Francisco or Los Angeles.  However, Californian’s are desperate for the out of doors, and with Yosemite being so spectacularly overcrowded, even the Pinnacles are super crowded during their peak season in the early spring.  

We continued our trip north with the navigation system, which is traffic aware, picking a route that took us over the Golden Gate Bridge.  We circled around some of the view points on the Marin County side of the bridge to stretch our legs and recall the prior times we had visited when our kids were so much smaller.  We had hoped to spend the night at the Comfort Inn in Fairfield, but it was sold out, so we ended up settling for a Rodeway Inn in Vallejo.  This place was a real dive, and spending the night there reinforced why we prefer to stay at the more upmarket Comfort Inn within the Choice Hotels network.  The room entrance was right on the parking lot, and it had single pane windows that didn’t cut down any of sounds in the room.  The room was tiny with ancient furniture and a terrible mattress and pillows.  We checked for signs of bed bugs, which we fortunately didn’t find.  There was only one small hand sized towel in the bathroom that we had to share for our showers, and no shampoo or conditioner.  Ben barricaded the door with a chair because it just didn’t feel safe.  Even though the parking lot was dead end, there was a lot of random traffic in and out of that parking lot, suggesting some prostitution and drug dealing going on.  One thing is for sure, we’re never staying there again.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

There was no breakfast, or even coffee at the Rodeway Inn, but we were happy to see that our car windows weren’t smashed in.  We loaded up and left the Rodeway Inn in our rear view mirror.  Our first stop was the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, where we we were amongst the first tour group of the day.  It was fun to see the factory in actual production.  We had taken the kids there more than 10 years ago, but the factory was undergoing maintenance at the time.  This time, there was candy being made and packaged.  The smells and sounds of candy being made is something to lift the spirits, especially after a scary night at the Rodeway Inn in Vallejo.  We discovered a new favorite flavor jelly bean called Mango Chili.  They reminded us of Mexican hard candies with a spicy chili filling inside that we had come across in the past, but haven’t been able to find since.  Even at $9.00/pound we just had to get some for the road.  They were also clearing out Reindeer corn (Candy corn in Green, red and white colors) for cheap, so we got some as road snacks.  

From the Jelly Belly Factory, we dashed back north on I-5, making a rest stop at the Olive Pit for samples of stuffed olives and our last In-N-Out burger stop in Redding before leaving California.  Mount Shasta was just as spectacular heading north as it had been heading south.  We made camp at the Roseburg Comfort Inn, which had an elevator and was the perfect hotel.  We used Janet’s last Shari’s coupon for dinner, and Janet spotted what looked like a beaver waddling around a retention pond off the freeway off ramp. Our waitress at Shari’s told us it was a Nutria, a large rodent that can grow to the size of a large beaver, but instead of a flat paddle tail, it has a tail like a giant rat.  They are an invasive species that has made itself into quite a pest in the area.  So we got pie and a lesson in the local ecology at the Roseburg Shari’s restaurant.  The pies were good too.  Peanut butter cream and coconut cream pies, if you must know.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Aside from a Wilsonville Costco gas and leg stretching stop, we made a beeline to Jack and Sharon’s place in Onalaska for a late lunch and to pick up some plant starts for Janet.  Jack had invited Ben to stick around that evening to go Tiger Muskie fishing with one of his fishing buddies, but that would have been too late, and Ben didn’t have either a freshwater license or fishing tackle.  Later that night, Jack did land a 40” tiger muskie and his buddy landed one that was probably 36” as well.  We arrived at Madison House in Kirkland just in time to help Ben’s brother George and his wife Carrie, who were visiting Ben’s mom Betty, finish up dinner and have some cookies for dessert.  We got Betty back to her room and into her TV chair for the night and then made the rest of our drive back to Oak Harbor, stopping in Bothell at the What the Pho for dinner.  We got home after dark, but were happy to see the house had not burned down in our absence, and Price was just as happy to see us as well.  We did enjoy our little California road trip, but it was nice to be home again.