Still at Coronado

We’ve enjoyed our stay at Fiddler’s Cove. We moved from a water-front campsite to a pull-through site on Valentine’s Day. We think we have the best 2^nd row site in the whole campground, because there’s a path to the beach in front of us which gives us an unobstructed view of San Diego Bay.

Our friends Rob and Janet drove down from Oceanside last Tuesday to visit us here at Coronado. We enjoyed lunch together and then went to Hotel Del Coronado to check out the beach. It was a beautiful sunny day, but with a small breeze off the ocean, a little cool at 65-degrees. However, we enjoyed conversation and cocktails on the sundeck at the hotel.

Then on Wednesday, we headed to Chula Vista for breakfast with Rob and Janet. We decided to go to Balboa Park and see the San Diego Model Railroad Museum. It is North America’s largest model railroad museum with 27,000 square feet of display space. They have O-scale, HO-scale, N-scale and 3-rail exhibits. We were impressed with the various scale-model exhibits of landscapes, small towns, roads, and railroads.

We also visited the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. We enjoyed the gardens, a koi pond, but were really impressed by the banzai trees. Many of the small trees were 50 to 60 years old.

We left Balboa Park and headed west to Ocean Beach to check out a place called Hodad’s and their “world’s greatest burgers”. They’ve been in business for 44-years. A “hodad” is a nonsurfer who frequents surfing beaches and pretends to be a surfer. The place was packed with people waiting outside to get in, so we passed and went down the street to South Beach Bar and Grill. We had been there four years ago with our son Paul and wife Ying to get the best fish tacos in San Diego. We sampled the wahoo fish tacos and they were just as good as they were in 2016.  

Julie and I decided to visit the San Diego Zoo yesterday. They’ve added a few new exhibits since we visited three years ago. But sadly, they no longer have the Pandas because they had to send them back to China in April 2019.

One very interesting zoo exhibit was of a Cheetah and a domestic dog. Cheetahs sometimes have domestic dogs as companions in their enclosure. 

This Friday, we leave Coronado and head to Yuma, then Ajo, Arizona. We meet up with our friends Kris and Jan from Albuquerque in Ajo over the weekend. 

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Coronado

We moved down the California coast on Tuesday, February 4^th from Oceanside to Coronado and the U.S. Navy’s Fiddlers Cove RV park. The park has a great view of the Coronado Bridge and the San Diego skyline across San Diego Bay.

The RV park is south of Coronado, which is connected to the mainland (Imperial Beach) by a seven-mile strip of land called the “Silver Strand”. The Pacific Ocean and beautiful sandy beaches are on the west side of the Silver Strand and San Diego Bay is on the east side. 

We had a beautiful full moon last week, rising above San Diego Bay.

We’ll be here in Coronado for two more weeks and are just hanging out. We discovered another Navy base close by in Imperial Beach. It’s easy to get to than driving through tourist-congested Coronado to go to Navy’s North Island base.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Watchin’ the Sunsets

We’ve been busy the past couple of weeks, but not as busy as the young Marines we see every day training here at Camp Pendleton. We see them go past in their diesel-powered amphibious vehicles and head up the beach.

We met our friends Rob and Janet, who live nearby in Oceanside, for lunch at Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers in Carlsbad a week ago last Friday. It’s an Arizona-based sports bar and grill chain with 12 locations near Phoenix and two locations in California. I enjoyed a “Jucy Lucy”, a cheddar jack stuffed patty, with a melted core of cheese!    

Last Thursday evening, Julie and I enjoyed another trip to the Wild Note Café and Belly Up Tavern in Solano Beach, about 25-miles south of here. We went to see Big Head Todd and the Monsters, who were on their Winter Tour 2020.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters is a Colorado band that formed 30 years ago and hail from Boulder, Colorado. This is at least the fourth time we’ve seen the band play: twice at Red Rocks and now twice at Belly Up Tavern. They did sing some of my favorite songs: “Bittersweet”; “Broken Hearted Savior”; “Circle”; “Please Don’t Tell Her”; and “It’s Alright”. The highlight of the show was Hazel Miller who joined the tour for two-weeks and I especially enjoy her powerful voice on “It’s Alright”.  

The Belly Up Tavern is a smaller venue with a 600-person capacity while the open air Red Rocks amphitheater west of Denver holds 9,525 fans.

 

We had a nice beach campfire on Saturday night with Rob and Janet. Rob and I worked for different companies but did the same kind of work in Colorado Springs back in the mid- to late-2000s. They moved to Austin, Texas for five years, when Rob retired and they moved here to Oceanside.

My Aunt Clara (my mother’s youngest sister) and Uncle Earl, who live in Vista, had us over for dinner a couple of weeks ago. We hadn’t seen them since our last visit here in November 2016 and we enjoyed catching up with them.

We invited them to our “home” on the beach last Sunday afternoon. It was a little too cool to sit outside, but we enjoyed dinner and had a nice visit inside our motorhome.   

We plan to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday and cheer on the Kansas City Chiefs (only because they’re filling in for the Denver Broncos from the AFC)

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Wintering in Southern California

We left Tucson on Thursday, January 2^nd, and headed to Yuma, Arizona for a 3-night stay. We lined up a mobile RV service while in Yuma to thoroughly wash and wax our motorhome that Saturday. The crew did a much-needed oxidation removal on our motorhome roof. 

On Sunday, we left the RV park at 7AM and went to the nearby truck stop to fill up with diesel fuel. While the poor truckers were paying $3.35/gallon, the truck stop had a RV lane where it was $2.95 and with my 8-cent Good Sam discount, I only paid $2.87/gallon. We wanted to fill up our thirsty motorhome before we crossed into California where fuel prices are much, much higher.

We arrived at Marine Corp Base Camp Pendleton and the Del Mar RV park around 11AM and got set up. Julie’s sister Cindy and brother-in-law Terry joined us an hour later for a 6-night stay. We hadn’t seen them since last March in south Texas. They both retired in April and are also full-time RVers. They’ve been traveling around the Pacific Northwest this past summer and fall.

Our campsites are both on the beach in the front row. We’ve had some awesome sunsets and enjoy campfires almost every night.

On Wednesday we enjoyed breakfast at Beach Break Café in Oceanside on Historic Highway 101. It was really yummy.

We took Cindy and Terry down to Solano Beach on Friday night for dinner at the Wild Note Café and a concert next door at Belly Up Tavern. 

After dinner we lined up to go into Belly Up Tavern and grab some seats when the doors opened for the concert. The main entrance for Belly Up Tavern is at the front of the venue, but dinner patrons can enter from the side door.

We saw two bands: the Clay Colton Band from San Diego and then Tusk, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band from New Jersey. We really enjoyed both bands and the entire evening.   

We said goodbye to Cindy and Terry who left this morning for Arizona. We’re at Camp Pendleton for another three weeks, just enjoying the beach and the awesome sunsets.

Steve & Julie Cornelius