Last time, I had taken the Hornblower hour long harbor cruise to get a good look at the ships around the harbor. I’d planned my visit to the waterfront to include visiting the USS Midway Museum and I’d allowed all day for these two things. But I suppose if you’re not ex-Navy like I am and have less of an interest in ships, a half day would suffice.
Here’s a shot of the Midway from the Hornblower as we docked. My car is somewhere with those others.
Sorry for the delay in publishing this. Had a run of bad luck with things and put working on my blog on the back burner. Nothing too terrible, just a little of this thing and a little of that thing which added up to big things. Mostly the troubles involve the RV & car. Anyway, I’m now parked at a nice RV park in Idaho, weather is in the 70’s and I’ve gotten most of the problems situated, arranged for a solution, or I’m near to solving them. Now, on with the reports of my visit to San Diego back in April of this year.
If you recall, I’d gone to SD to deliver an old satellite antenna and tripod system to a gentleman who still uses Hughsnet for Wifi when he stays for months along the Baja coast. Since I was in town, and the daily RV park rates in the area were outrageous, up in the $50/night range, I’d opted to stay at a county park and paid their weekly rate of $267, which ends up being $34 nightly, which was the best nightly rate I’d found in the area. Turned out they had pretty fair Wifi too.
This was the opportunity I’d looked forward to for years, a chance and reason to visit SD. I’d gone to Navy boot camp here back in the ’60s and really wanted to visit again. Now that I was in town, and had a week to work with, I was enjoying those tourist places I’d not had the opportunity to visit back then. Since I’d already visited Old Town, and the Zoo, it was now time to visit the USS Midway along dockside in downtown. But wait! There’s also the Hornblower Harbor Cruise right next to the Midway. The cruise only takes an hour and the first departure is at 8:30 AM, then the Midway opens at 10 AM. So I bought tickets for both activities and prepaid for parking on the dock between the two venues. How handy!
First thing in the morning, I arrived along the harbor at 8:10, entered the dock parking area from W. E Street, (the dock parking opens early) and soon was walking over to the Harbor Cruise. The dock parking is very convenient, and there was plenty of room since I arrived early. I recommend using it rather than trying to find parking near the area. Very economical too, just $10. And that was for all day as I recall. There is nearby metered parking for $1.25/hour but has a 2 hour limit and I knew the Midway visit would take longer than that.
The cruise of the harbor was something I really wanted to go on because I’d get a much better view of the Navy resources around the harbor, and of Coronado Island, where I’d gone to boot camp. There’s now a bridge that goes over there, back when I was here the first time, there were only ferries to travel between the mainland and the island. (Which isn’t an island at all but I didn’t know that back then).
So, here we are, cruising the San Diego Harbor. This first picture is of the USS Midway, where I’ll be visiting later. For scale, note the human standing on the upper deck area on the right side of the ship. You can just make out his head and shoulders.
Most folks are well aware of the majestic San Diego Zoo. One of the world’s oldest, largest, and most copied zoos. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve visited a couple times and this time was able to spend all day, or rather most of the day here touring the compounds at my leisure. I drove from the Summit Meadows RV park where I was staying the 16 miles to the zoo in 20 odd minutes and avoided rush hour traffic by leaving around 9 am on a fine April 4th Wednesday. Traffic was fairly light. Arriving at the zoos free parking lot, I first parked way off in the boonies and after walking around a bit to get my bearings, drove over closer to the front gate so I walked into the park around 9:50. I had purchased a ticket on line and my UPC code was scanned right at the entrance turnstiles, bypassing all the people who hadn’t prepurchased their tickets and were now standing in long lines. I’d read enough about the zoo that I knew to head straight for the bus tour gate but even with my early arrival on a weekday while schools were in session, it was still crowded with lots of parents with school age and younger kids in line. After getting in line there at the bus kiosk took almost 1/2 hour to actually board the bus. The buses are double decker with the top side uncovered so I steered myself into the upstairs line for the best view. Turned out I sat on the wrong side of the bus as nearly all the good pictures would have been taken from the other side.
Heading for the buses along with some other folks that were hurrying in my direction towards the buses.
After arriving at the county park and hooking up, as I mentioned last post, I was surprised to find that it has free Wifi though it’s not mentioned on their website. They didn’t answer my email query about it before I planned the trip either. So, good, won’t have to use my phone data. The Wifi gave me the ability to really plan my week long visit in San Diego. There’s plenty to see, and I had plenty of time to do whatever I wanted.
First things first, next morning drove around the area to find a grocery store, found one, than spied several places nearby that might be good to eat if I came home from being a tourist and didn’t feel like cooking. As I left and returned to the RV park, spied 3 cars parked under the overpass. Looked like homeless to me.
Than after that nearby roaming, spent time on the internet researching for bargains and discount tickets for the attractions in San Diego. I did find an organization that had some specials where they combined several attractions and give a discount for buying their package. Did save some money but not a lot. Spread my plans out so I’d be busy the entire week with Friday and Saturday off, but not so busy that I’d lose interest.
After arranging all that, I just drove in the direction I’d be taking the next day and learned my way around town a little. Just a leisurely day on the road in a big city finding where things were. No biggie. Did crane my neck at those few light rail stations I’d pass and didn’t hardly see anyone at them. And the stations didn’t seem to be in very good spots either. Also checked the internet for bus and train stations and their schedules near me and it turned out that I was miles from the nearest train station. Far enough that the bus ride would take an hour just to get to the nearest train station, than another 20 minutes to anywhere. Not good. Even getting a senior discount card couldn’t rescue that idea. OK, this is California, land of the car, so guess I’ll be driving.
Next morning, headed back to Old Town Downtown. This would be the site of the original settlement from a couple hundred years back. They’ve kind of made it touristy with all sorts of ol’ timey displays, museum, old homes and hotel open for tours, with lots of food and trinket vendors. I parked under a freeway overpass with a bunch of other cars I’d spotted when I thought I was close enough to the entrance and unlike other parking nearby, turned out that it’s free parking, and there was an open space right at the beginning of the sidewalk that would take me to Old Town.
And here I am just after walking into the Old Town attraction. Mix of haciendas and 1800’s style buildings. Plus some reproductions. This is where San Diego began as a city.
First stop is pretty much the first building in SD. A hacienda built by a Spanish family, occupied for over a century. 
Continue reading
News – My computer crashed and I lost all my pictures and tons of other documents and spreadsheets. This happened a couple weeks ago and I’m finally getting back to where I can start publishing articles again. Found software to restore all (I think) of the missing pictures and then spent hours re-categorizing them. So, I’m back in good shape for writing…and we’ll begin where I left off last time, in Yuma.
After spending two months in Yuma, it was time to head over to San Diego. It was getting pretty hot, and the RV park was quickly emptying out because of that. I can see why. My Heat Pump AC system kept me nice and comfy though. Well, anyway, it was time to move on and I had a plan…
I’d sold my old satellite internet equipment to a guy over in San Diego and I’ve wanted to visit again for years. This seemed like a good time.
Yuma to San Diego is only a 3 leisurely hour trip but I still needed to leave early. First to stop for fuel for both my vehicles, and then for propane as I was running a bit low. Got out of town at 11 AM eventually. It was a Sunday so not much traffic.
After traveling through the desert area heading due west, you eventually get to this hilly area a bit past El Centro. Interesting thing about it are the giant rocks everywhere. Oh, and it’s pretty steep in places. Very long steep grades.
In the last picture of my previous post, (re-posted below!), off in the distance, on the left side of the bridge, is a bunch of buildings. As it turns out, that’s the old territorial prison. So that is what we’ll visit today. I’d come down here specifically today to visit the prison but first I drove the 1/2 mile or so past the prison to check out the casino with it’s RV park, also passing that terrible museum mentioned in last post that’s just to my right in this picture. Up the hill a bit.
Can’t say I’m a big fan of Yuma, but the price for staying at the RV park of $199/mo plus electric (likely to be in the $125 range) is difficult to pass up. Helps me save money for my upcoming trip NE to Sioux City, Minneapolis, Forest City, Fairfield, and perhaps Vermont. We’ll see. I would like to visit Niagara Falls once. I passed by it one time, but never really visited. Vermont may be beyond my limit of travel because I get all antsy when I go east and the RV parks, generally run down, in my experience tend to charge astronomical prices for short term and long term visits not even providing half way decent services for their visitors. Like the Wifi is generally bad. It’s maddening. But I haven’t been for 10 years so maybe at least the Wifi is better these days.
Anyway, I paid for a month shortly after I got here to Yuma and spent much of the first month working on an electronic project for a friend. That was really fun. Enjoyed that immensely. As a result, I didn’t do much touristy stuff here in Yuma at the outset. After that project was completed and sent off then I did try to do something touristy…and that was to visit a museum that’s just a few blocks from downtown. I had already made a foray downtown and found a brew pub and several other upscale places to hang out, but like I mentioned last time, the downtown core is kind of blah so only hung out there a couple times the first month I was in Yuma.
During one visit downtown, I’d traveled outside the core a couple miles up a hill across an old timey bridge and found the Indian reservation (also has a casino) and they had a big sign along the roadway advertising a museum. Turned in and found that it was once an Indian school. One of those run by Catholics where the kids weren’t allowed to speak their native language. The buildings on the property were in poor shape in many cases but based on the signs size and age, figured at least the museum would be good. There were the abandoned buildings, and on the same grounds were actively used police station, tribe meeting center, and fish resources center. From the hill these facilities are on, I could see the casino with large RV park down the slope on flatlands a short drive away.
Wandering around in my car trying to find the museum proper I came across this nifty RV parked next to one of the buildings. Note the diorama setup on the roof. There was a fence so I couldn’t get closer, so used my telephoto for some closeups.
Pretty neat. Someone went to a lot of trouble. Continue reading
After that harrowing border crossing, I settled into my spot at Southern Mesa RV Park and soon found that I needed to move because the ground was too soft and my RV’s landing pads were sinking into the ground. But before that move happened, I took a few shots of the RV park. Fairly big. There I am parked on the left in space #95.
And here is a shot of the Wifi antenna from space #102. So I moved here after this picture was taken and after I’d arranged with the office to stay for an entire month. 
Continue reading
Forgot to publish this back when I wrote it. It’s been languishing in ‘Drafts’ ever since. Not sure it will generate any notifications to readers when I publish and too lazy to find out.
I have wanted to go to San Diego for a very long time because back in ’66 when I went to boot camp here, I never felt I’d had enough time to really get a feel for the town. As expected when you’re at boot camp. The regular Navy boot camp facility on the Navy Base was undergoing renovation so the Navy put us (a thousand or so recruits I think) at the Navy Amphibious Base across the harbor, at an older facility on Coronado Island. When we had time off, you could stand on the shore and look across the bay at all the WWII mothballed ships over at the Navy base. Some were being refurbish for more service but most of them were just boarded up.
Some of the things that happened in those short two weeks I was there:
But I digress. In the times I’d been to SD while in the Navy, I came to appreciate what a great city it is. So many interesting things to see and do there. Excellent weather too. So I wanted an excuse to travel there and I got my reason back in November when I was up in Pahrump.
I had this Hughes satellite dish setup for internet. I’d long ago stopped using the equipment but was still hanging onto it. It had cost me $1300 back in ’05, I’d used it up to ’09, but the reason for it had slowly changed over the years. RV parks back then weren’t too keen on installing another service for their clients, but the pressure from campers became very strong so they basically had to if they wanted to compete with those that did install wifi. Many times I’d find RV parks with wifi available ONLY in their office so my satellite setup was pretty handy. Eventually though, nearly all parks I went to had better wifi than my satellite could provide, and was free, where I was paying $70/month. And Hughes changed the satellite foot print so I couldn’t use it in most of Mexico! Eventually, I wasn’t using it enough so I dropped the service and stored the equipment in one of my basement compartments. So I had that equipment taking up room. Couldn’t bare to just toss it all though. I did check several times over the years about reinstating the service, but it never worked out to be economical.
Here’s most of the setup…the 0.9 meter dish, the horn, the custom bracket for azimuth and other adjustments, the surveyors tripod (worth $600 back when I bought it – I checked, now they’re made in China and sell for $125), the 25′ of dual coax cable, and the triangle that goes on the ground and the tripod legs stick into the corners nice and stable like.
Not shown is a device that is splayed out under the tripod inside of that triangle on the ground after the dish is set up and then spikes are driven through holes in the legs of the device into the ground. Than a ratcheting strap is hooked to an eye at the apex of that device, is strung up to the bottom of the tripod and hooks into that eye you can see in the picture below. When tightened the antenna assembly is tightened to the ground. So the assembly is fairly windproof. Using it, you don’t have to use cement blocks or jugs of water weighing down the antenna to hold it in place like you see with many large ground mounted antennas. I was able to use it around 70% of the time when I set up the antenna.
Then there’s this little device that helps with pointing and peaking the antenna on the satellite. The modem that this all plugs into was obsolete so I tossed that. 
What I had planned on doing was to advertise it on eBay and try to sell it through that site. I didn’t really like that idea because I’d have to ship everything, and pay eBay if it sold. There were others selling nearly the same setup so I did get an idea what mine was worth. Anyway, I weighed and measured everything and then figured out how much it would cost to ship it all. And it came to $125 minimum. Plus all the work that would come with packaging it all so it’s not damaged in shipment. Went ahead and did my best to find shipping boxes and packing material for all those odd sizes and shapes for the equipment just in case.
My rent at Campo San Felipe was to be up on January 28th so I planned that date for my departure from Mexico. I would have liked to stay longer but…
First though, I did a bit more sightseeing around SF. And here’s one of my adventures heading up the coast road (north) from SF. This is just a mile or so from Kiki’s RV park where I’ve stayed in years past.
I like these old fashioned fences. Note the text up on the hill. High school kids. Meh. 
