Ron Corbin – Page 49 – RV Travels in Europe and North America

January 27, 2019 San Diego CA

Today is Dylan’s birthday so we planned a big day around town to celebrate. We started out with a seafood brunch at Point Loma Seafood. It is part fishmonger and part restaurant, definitely a laid back California experience, but the food was really exceptional, and was a good start to the day.

Our next stop was Cabrillo National Monument on a bluff overlooking San Diego harbor. This was the first day it was open after the government shutdown and a lot of people were coming out to use the facilities. It is an interesting place located on former military property with stunning views of the harbor and the ocean. The monument has exhibitions on Spanish explorers, as it is believed the monument contains the landing place of the Spanish explorer who was the first European to land in San Diego. It also has a whale watching platform, some nice tidal pools, and exhibits on the military uses of the area. We really enjoyed it.

The Cabrillo Monument to the first European to see San Diego Harbor.

Next we headed over to another San Diego brewery located right next to Point Loma Seafood. We had a couple of rounds of really excellent Lagers and IPA’s and were quite impressed with Epigg Brewing. Our next stop was going to be Pariah brewery for Pizza and beer. When we got there Pizza was not available so we headed down the road for a great Mexican meal to wrap up the day. Thanks Dylan for a fun week in San Diego.

The shore line at Cabrillo National Monument.

January 26, 2019 San Diego CA

Dylan suggested we head up to San Juan Capistrano to visit the mission there. It is about an hour north of here and you have to transit thru Camp Pendleton. The Marines were out playing today. There was an amphibious ship off shore, and we saw some ship to shore movement including some helicopters, and amphibious tractors. It brought back some nice memories for Ron.

A CH-53 helicopter stopping traffic on I-5 as it passes thru Camp Pendleton.

San Juan Capistrano is one of the best preserved of the California Missions. When the Spanish were colonizing Alta California in the 1700’s they built a string of missions along the coast about one days horse ride apart. Each mission was part fort and part Catholic church. They were designed to encourage the native Americans to convert to Catholicism. California uses the missions as part of the 4th grade curriculum for elementary schools. We remember helping Alex with the construction of his model mission when we lived in California. The mission at San Juan Capistrano used to be famous for an annual return of swallows to the mission. These days the swallows are going some where else due to urbanization around the mission.

The interior of the chapel at Mission San Juan Capistrano.

After the mission we stopped at a couple of breweries, and swung by Walmart to buy a new water hose for Scout as our old one gave up the ghost yesterday. We have been really impressed with the quality of the breweries in San Diego.

January 25, 2019 San Diego CA

This morning Dylan came over to give us his car for the day. We planned a shopping trip to stock up for the ride home, and to pick up a couple of things only available in California.

After spending the morning shopping on the Navy Base, we joined Dylan for a nice pizza lunch in a restaurant in his neighborhood. After lunch we headed over to Costco to pick up Ton’s favorite noodles that are only available in California. When Dylan finished work he joined us at the RV park for dinner and a couple of good Oregon microbrews we had brought down. We had a nice chat for a couple of hours before turning in for the night.

The good news is that the government shutdown is over, and Dylan will be able to return to a normal schedule on Monday. He was telling us that he attended a conference in Washington during the shutdown, and despite the shutdown they arranged for him to get a tour of the Department of Interior headquarters. He said it was quite weird walking thru the empty building with the Christmas decorations still up in mid-January.

January 24, 2019 San Diego CA

Not much to talk about today. We did the laundry, and both tried to relax and recover from our ill’s. Dylan joined us for lunch, but had a dinner date, so we ate some leftovers and turned in early.

This Pelican posed for us while we ate lunch.

January 23, 2019 San Diego CA

Not a very interesting travel day. Both of us have been dealing with nagging medical issues so we decided to use today to go by a clinic and get them looked at. We both had our diagnoses confirmed and got some prescriptions to deal with the issues.

In the afternoon we went to downtown San Diego for dinner at Melvin’s. We had a great dinner of Thai Curry. This brewery is originally from Wyoming and was the house brewery for a Thai restaurant, which is an unusual way to found a brewery. Their beer is considered one of the best micro breweries in the country. We then finished the night by taking a walk around downtown San Diego.

Ron and Dylan in front of a monument to craft beer.

January 22, 2019 San Diego CA

Today we shifted to San Diego to see our other son Dylan. The drive over was pretty uneventful.

Ton and I were talking about the difference in how we treat distances here versus Europe. We decided to take it easy driving on the trip. Taking it easy in the US are 300 to 400 mile drives each day. As an example the drive to San Diego today was 328 miles. Our easy drives here would be 500 to 600km drives in Europe which is much farther than we would ever consider driving there. Some of it is the nature of the country. The next closest town to Las Vegas would be San Bernardino which in itself is about 180 miles, so there would be no short drives. When we come home it is interesting how quickly we can switch to the American sense of distance.

We met Dylan for dinner and went to a nice brewery. We had an interesting conversation about the government shutdown, as the office he works is closed though he is getting paid because he is working thru the University of Montana.

August 19, 2018 San Diego CA

Our final day with Dylan on this trip was the San Diego Zoo. Dylan is a member of the zoo so we were able to tag along for free using his membership. The San Diego Zoo is world famous and rightfully so. We spent 5 hours going from exhibit to exhibit. We hit all of the big animals and really enjoyed ourselves.

Impressive big cat at the San Diego Zoo.

The San Diego Zoo specializes in taking care of elderly elephants. This one is over 40 years old.

Our other priority for the day was to find a fan. Our roof fan has decided to stop working and probably needs a new rain sensor, as it seems convinced it is raining and will not open. After the zoo we went to Costco and Ikea and they were both out of fans as it has been unusually warm here. Finally we found a fan at Target.

Dinner was another great meal at a seafood market and restaurant. It is an old part of town, but the food was really outstanding and the line to get end never ended while we were there. San Diego has really been a good food experience on this trip from the unexpected Thai Hamburger to the great sea food. It was good to see Dylan and we really enjoyed ourselves here.

August 18, 2018 San Diego CA

Dylan swung by to pick us up about 930. After a breakfast of noodles prepared by Ton we headed off to our first stop of the day the Tijuana Slough Wildlife Refuge. It is one of the areas that the office Dylan works in manages. He took us on a nice walk through the slough and he explained some of the challenges of managing wildlife refuges in a metropolitan area of nearly 3 million people.

The next stop was some shopping at the Navy Exchange and Commissary in San Diego where we saw a food cart advertising Thai Hamburgers. Of course we had to go see what Thai Hamburgers were. Well they are not hamburgers at all. Dylan actually guessed that the “rolls” would be sticky rice and he was right. The meat is barbeque pork that Thai call Meu Ping, and it was delicious. The three of us split a “hamburger” and pronounced it a messy but delicious meal.

The final stop for the day was to join the Timbers Army San Diego group to watch the Timbers. They were going to meet in a pub downtown so we headed downtown but were quite early. We wandered around for a while and blundered into one of Ton’s other items on her list, Oscars Mexican seafood. We each had an excellent Fish Taco, and some ceviche.

The game was a huge disappointment as the Timbers looked listless, and were never in the game. We left a little early to head back for the night.

August 17, 2018 San Diego CA

Today we headed into San Diego to spend the weekend with our son Dylan who is working there for the Fish and Wildlife Service. We had a slow start as we wanted to wait for traffic to die down before taking off.

Ton saw a Mexican Grocery next to the hotel so while Ron went to get some fuel for Scout she had a good time shopping for good cheap vegetables and a Mexican pastry for breakfast. She was very impressed with the quality, variety and cost of the vegetables.

The drive into San Diego was thankfully uneventful and we arrived at the Navy RV park we will be staying at around 130pm. Dylan was able to get off work a little early so we knocked off two of Ton’s items from the agenda. The two breweries she wanted to visit in San Diego were fortunately only a couple of blocks apart so we were able to knock visit them both. The first was Alesmith and we were quite impressed with both the facility and the beer. The next stop was Mikkeller Brewery. Mikkeler is an interesting operation as they are from Copenhagen Denmark. They consider themselves gypsy brewers who work out of different breweries around the world. The brewery in San Diego is the first brewery they have had that is their own. The beer was interesting and the art in the brewery was very nice. When it came down to voting on the best beer Dylan and Ron picked Alesmith and Ton declared a tie.

Dylan enjoying a taster at Ballast Point Brewing.

We ended the day with a nice meal at the campsite.

August 16, 2018 Victorville CA

Today was a travel day. We wanted to avoid Los Angeles so we decided to head east and go around LA. So we headed east and across the central valley. We are always impressed when we drive across the huge central valley. We have a good time trying to identify all of the different crops and trees we pass by. Truthfully we spend most of the time going that is a tree but not sure what kind of tree unless there are big orange things hanging on them, but we have fun nevertheless.

An “Okie” display in the central valley.

Today we stopped at Blackwells Corner Store. It is famous as the last place James Dean was seen alive when he filled up his Porsche there on his way to a car race in Salinas. He was later found a few miles down a back road having wrecked his car and killed himself and his passenger. Ron commented that he never really got the obsession with James Dean, Ton said it was because I was never cool enough to get James Dean.

Ron was not cool enough to get James Dean!

As we headed into Victorville we realized we were surrounded by pretty large thunderstorms. Ton checked the weather app and we learned that there were flash flood warnings for Victorville so it was a good time to park up for the night.

August 15, 2018 San Luis Obispo CA

Today we started the day visiting one of our favorite places in central California. Near San Simeon there are beaches that are covered in Elephant Seals. We have visited this site three times previously and always enjoyed ourselves. This time we again enjoyed ourselves though as advertised there were fewer seals than normal, though many of the full sized males were there and really impressive.

The Elephant Seals were relatively sparse today.

After visiting the seals again we had a nice burger at a general store that had been in the same family since 1916. It was an interesting set up as they had a burger place selling Hearst Ranch burgers, a high end wine tasting bar, and a post office all in one large room. We split a burger as it was quite large.

A wine bar and post office. Only in California!

After heading over to Paso Robles to get some fuel we eventually headed back to our campsite and had a nice dinner.

August 14, 2018 San Luis Obispo CA

It was time to finally leave our friends Pae and Supachai. For our going away Pae prepared a great Thai breakfast of Cao dom. Ron really loved it. Thanks to our good friends Pae and Supachai for hosting us and showing us around the bay area.

Ron enjoying a beer at Central Coast Brewing.

Heading south we camped up in San Luis Obispo. We visited a really nice brewery called Central Coast. We enjoyed a couple of beers and were really pleasantly surprised when the bill came as we did not realize it was happy hour and the beers were $2 off. The last stop for the day was the Madonna Inn. It is a hotel that has been the place to be in San Luis Obispo for decades. Trip Advisor describes the decor as eccentric and Ton says they are right. Below are a couple of pictures that prove her point.

The dinning room at the Madonna Inn. That is a lot of pink.

August 12, 2018 San Francisco CA

Today we played tourists in San Francisco. We headed into the city early to beat the traffic and headed to the Embarcadero area. We lived in the “Bay Area” in the late 90’s so had done the San Francisco tours in the past with visitors. We were trying to convince our friends that they did not need to do this. Luckily they insisted as we really enjoyed ourselves.

We covered the Embarcadero area in detail, and hit a couple of the big tourist sites along the water front. It was a beautiful day so we had nice views of the bay. As we kept walking we visited the Ghiradelli chocolate factory for an ice cream sundae.

We ended the day at the palace of fine arts which Ton and I had never visited. It was built for the world exposition in 1913 it is quite impressive and fortunate to be still around. Originally it was built to only last for the exhibition, but people loved it so much they decided to keep it. Over time some of the love faded and the maintenance deteriorated, during World War II the army took over as it was located on military property, and used it as a motor vehicle maintenance area. After the war it had deteriorated to the point where they considered tearing it down, but fortunately did not.

All of our touristing around resulted in a new step record for our friend of 30,000 steps in one day, so we decided to reward ourselves with some Chinese food for dinner. It was a really nice day.

August 11, 2018 San Jose CA

Today was much more relaxing than yesterday. We started with a nice breakfast near our friends apartment. On Saturdays they close the street in front of our friends apartment and have a giant Yoga session. So while we were eating our high calorie breakfast we watched about 300 people doing a group yoga session.

Feeling guilty, we decided to go and do some walking ourselves. We started at the Santa Clara Mission. It is one of a string of missions the Spanish used to control California when they colonized it. The missions reach from San Diego to just north of San Francisco. Everyone in California knows the stories of the missions as it is a main part of the curriculum for all students in 5th Grade. Even if you move here from other state or country like we did, if you have children you get to know all you could want to know about missions.

Santa Clara mission. The first mission in California named after a woman saint.

Santa Clara mission is probably the most well maintained of the missions as it is on the campus of Santa Clara University which is a Jesuit college. This school is well endowed and the church building is obviously well loved. We were going to go inside to take some pictures, but there was a mass going on. We stood in the back for a few minutes and were wondering about how well attended the mass was on a Saturday, when we realized that they were consecrating about 10 new priests as Jesuits.

Later we did some walking around the neighborhood, and had a nice Vietnamese lunch in a giant Vietnamese shopping area in San Jose.

February 12, 2018 Blue Lake CA

Good Brew Hunting continued today with two stops as we continue our very slow pub crawl north. After a slow start in the morning we headed towards Boonville California to a brewery that we had targeted called Anderson Valley Brewery. To get there we covered about 25 miles of twisty mountain roads until we dropped into the valley. The beer was delicious, and we debated calling it a day there, but decided to push on north.

Anderson Valley Brewing our favorite brewery on the tour.

After another three hours we ended up at the Mad River brewery in Blue Lake. The beer was good but not quite up to the standard of Anderson Valley. However, they were having a sale on cans so we picked up a case of a nice lager for the next trip in Scout.

The scenery among the coastal mountains of California.

Tonight we are urban camping in a casino parking lot near the brewery in Blue Lake.

February 11, 2018 Petaluma CA

Ton has dubbed the rest of our trip north good beer hunting. The plan is to move north roughly following US101 through Northern California and Oregon searching for breweries.

With Ron still a little under the weather the plan was to take it easy and only visit one brewery today. We chose Russian River brewery in Santa Rosa. It is famous for two IPA’s Pliney the Elder and Pliney the Younger. They have a national reputation and even though we have tried them both we thought we would go by the brewery to try one on site. When we got there, the line to get in to the brewery had about 300 people in it. It turns out it was the release day for this years Pliney the Younger and also the San Francisco beer festival. When someone from the brewery came by and informed us that the wait to get in would be five hours we decided to go somewhere else.

Russian River Brewing where the line to get in was 5 hours.

The second place was about five miles away called Bear Republic Brewery. We had a taster tray of 9 beers ranging from a pilsner to a stout. There were several good beers though we thought the lighter beers were better than the darker beers.

Ron is still a little worn out from the flu, so we headed over to a nice campground in dairy country near Petaluma that came with over 180 channels on their cable. While Ron took a nap Ton was able to watch her favorite hockey team on the TV.

The California Dairy Association has been running adds featuring their “happy cows.”

February 10, 2018 Baker CA

Ron is under the weather so today was about getting as far north as Ron could take and then to rest. We did make one stop at a landmark bakery in the town of Baker California. Eric Schaatz bakery is famous for it’s Sheepherder bread, which is supposed to be based on bread brought over in the 1800’s by German shepherds to the area. We split a sandwich and brought a couple of loaves of bread.

We passed over several 7000 and 8000 foot passes on the way to Reno with absolutely no snow. California is really having a bad drought this year.

Sierra Nevada Mountains with almost no snow in February.

February 9, 2018 China Lake CA

Today was a travel day. We got up early and tried to clean some of the sand from Scout. Parking directly on the beach is really great, but it comes with a ton of sand which managed to get everywhere. Ton did a great job chasing most of it out, but will probably take another shot at it this afternoon.

The downside of being on the beach is sand everywhere inside. Not much of a downside.

We were up early and had another visit from the local Marines. This time a company of Marines were using the beach in front of us for physical training. All of the women in the campground were fascinated to watch the women Marines in the unit doing the training alongside their male counterparts, and I think the mother in all of them came out a little bit. I know the women Marines would not want to be treated any other way.

Physical training on the beach. Just like the recruiter told them!

We reluctantly departed our ocean front property, and headed out into southern California traffic. Ron was a bit under the weather so we were focused on getting down the road.

One of the weird things about driving around in the Mojave is that fairly frequently you come across these large airports with hundreds of mothballed airplanes parked there. This one was near Adelanto.

February 8, 2018 Camp Pendleton CA

We had a slow start to the day. One of the things about staying on a military base is that sometimes you share your campground with Marines training. This morning a platoon of amtracks (a floating armored personnel carrier) went thru the camp.

Two LVTP7 Amphibious Tractors, known as AMTRACKS.

They then took off down the beach.

They are going to enter the water a little further down by the safety boat you see in the water.

We headed over to Oceanside for the afternoon we shared a fish and chips lunch at a nice restaurant. We then had a nice walk thru town and down to the pier. A lot of California coastal towns have piers, and Oceanside’s is nice, and not quite as commercial as some of the others.

We watched the surfers for a while from the pier. Ton pointed out one older gentlemen mixed in with all of the younger surfers. After a while though it was clear the old guy was by far the best surfer.

February 7, 2018 Camp Pendleton CA

The first job for today was to try to sort out our camera. It suddenly stopped working. We are not sure if the battery has given up the ghost or it is something bigger. It is 6 or 7 years old so it may be just at the end of its’ life despite Ton’s meticulous maintenance. For now we are in possession of a new camera we bought at Costco. While Ton was sorting out the camera and doing some grocery shopping, Ron took Scout for an oil change.

After that we headed out to check out the north part of San Diego county. Once again Ron is shocked that an area he remembers so well from 20 years ago has changed substantially. Oceanside has gentrified tremendously, and Carlsbad is positively upscale now. We really enjoyed checking out the town including the Belching Beaver Brewery, a Pizza place that also brewed beer, and the farmers market. In fact we had such a good time that we decided to spend another night here.

Last night most of the sites around us were empty, when we returned tonight we were surrounded by a bunch of large RV’s. It turns out it is a group of Elks from around Moreno Valley California who are here for the weekend. They seem like a bunch of nice people and invited us to join them tomorrow for a card tournament. We will see.