The 746 mile "almost a road trip..."

The Crystal Pier

The difference between a weekend and a road trip is that with a road trip, the whole point is the driving, and with a weekend, you just want to get there and stay put.  The drive is just the means...  of course it is never that way for me, if I am driving it is a road trip!  

The first thing I did was wash the car.  If you're going on a road trip, you've got to go in a clean motorcar. So I washed the Chevy and then I drove to San Diego... and there I stayed put.  Kinda.  I got a room at the Pacific View Motel in Pacific Beach, just about two blocks north of Grand Ave off Mission Blvd on Emerald Street. 

Pretty much everything you want can be right there in the neighborhood... I've been to San Diego so many times, I don't feel like there's anything I have left to do there, so these days my point in going is the ocean and the beach.  I repeatedly take the harbor cruises and I always visit Point Loma's southern-most tip (for the view).

I like the Silver Strand - but there's nothing else out there but beach -- so I have become accustomed to staying in Mission Beach or more precisely, Pacific Beach and I like the Pacific View Motel because it's not too fancy, just a regular motel kind of place, clean, and the staff is friendly and accommodating.

I made Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, and then left town for a beach weekend on Friday morning.  I didn't start too early, finally got on the road at 1045.  It is about 1.5 hours to Gila Bend and I stopped there for coffee and breakfast.  From there, it was down to Yuma and a quick stop at the Shiloh Inn to check out a meeting room (work stuff!). 

From there to San Diego, the highway runs right close to the border and at first, as you depart Yuma and the irrigated agriculture of that area, you go out across the Imperial Dunes. Back in the old days they actually built the road on wooden planks so when the blowing sands covered them up they could just re-place them on top of the sand and keep driving.  

After you leave the dunes and all that associated sand-rail recreational activity on a holiday weekend, you cross more Sonoran Desert until you get to the El Centro area and more green agricultural fields.  Most travelers on I-8 never realize that as you pass the Holtville interchange there is a public-access hot spring just off the highway, visible from the road but partially hidden in an oasis of palms. I personally never knew it was there until my friend Gen wanted to go looking for it one day a few years back.

After El Centro, there is more desert and then an abrupt climb of about 3,500 feet to the top of the coastal range at the Tecate Divide. Once on top at about 4100 feet, the air has cooled probably 20 degrees in the summer time. It stays cooler all the way into San Diego from that point. It is my favorite part of the drive -- the high country before you get into the first parts of the city (where the traffic starts to get heavier).

Pacific View Motel

On arrival in Pacific Beach (about 35 miles later), I got my room and walked out to dinner before meeting Genevieve and Gwen for a visit. I am almost ashamed to say I went to San Diego and with all of those great little beachside restaurants all around me, I ate at Denny's the first evening.  Yes, I did; I had spaghetti.

So afterwards, I met with Gen and Gwen for a while before they returned to the place where they would spend the night (down by San Ysidro) and I watched a little TV before going to sleep. I did not sleep soundly, the neighborhood was too noisy.  But still, the sounds of the ocean and the cool breezes blowing in were a definite treat.  I kept my windows open all around (my room had two window-walls). And I had a very comfortable bed at the Pacific View Motel on Emerald Street and "the beach."

Saturday morning, I got some things to eat at the grocery store down the street and after meeting my friends, we set out for the day's adventure.  We started with a visit to Cabrillo National Monument at the end of Point Loma then drove through Old Town San Diego.  It was very crowded (being a holiday weekend) and so we didn't stop after all but went to the Hillcrest Neighborhood to find a coffee place.  After a stop there, we drove south to Balboa Park and walked through that to see what was going on there, then headed over to the waterfront for dinner at Anthony's.

Anthony's is a tradition with my family. The restaurant sits right over the water at the harbor-side and being a rather well-established San Diego tourist destination, it is on the expensive side.  On the other hand, while it is expensive, the food and the service are always good to excellent.  I had a combination plate with broiled lobster tail, coconut crusted shrimp and "crab bites," served with a citrus rice pilaf and a salad. I also ordered a cup of Manhattan-style chowder. It wasn't the best red chowder I've ever had -- pero fue bastante bien y me gusto mucho!  I favor the red chowder over the cream variety, I think simply because it isn't as common. The cream variety has maybe become a little passé?  

Crystal Symphony

As we arrived at the restaurant, a huge cruise ship was in the process of leaving from the terminal nearby -- so we watched it sail away until it was no longer in sight at all.  It was the "Crystal Symphony" and I found out later it was headed out toward the Channel Islands by way of San Pedro.  This may have been two separate cruises punctuated by a Sunday change-over at San Pedro.  At any rate, when we got back to the motel in Pacific Beach, I could see it way out in the ocean on its way northwest toward the islands.  I kept watching it off and on until it disappeared over the horizon or into the fog -- it's hard to tell which is which at night.

We walked down the beach for about a mile, then sat on the motel's balcony and talked until the girls got sleepy and left. They drank a little wine and I had ice cream. I tried to finish the movie I'd started – “Rio Grande” -- never did finish it.  Of the three "cavalry trilogy" John Ford films, I think it is my least favorite.  Still it's a John Ford western; there's nothing better than that. I took my DVD player with me on this trip and hooked it up to the motel's TV monitor.

Saturday night was a bit quieter than Friday night had been, but I still did not sleep well.  I got my rest, that's about the best I can say for it.  On Sunday morning, I had breakfast at a small Mexican place nearby called La Perla and walked out onto the Crystal Pier, took some photos, and waited for the girls to show up.  We visited for a little while and as I had to check out and head home, we didn't do much else. 

I would be driving home and they would shadow me as far as the Imperial Valley and the sand dunes.  I left Pacific Beach at Grand and Ingrahm at about 1345 and I was home again in 6.5 hours (they stopped for coffee). I was expecting heavy holiday traffic but other than within Phoenix, never encountered it.  I got to see a pretty sunset in my rear-view mirrors. The car got an average of 37 mpg which is not bad.  The idea had been some R and R: the mission was successful. I unpacked and then started thinking about my next trip...  I have a four-day coming up in February.

William W. Caldwell - Veteran's Day 2012

W.W. Caldwell, 2nd Lt, US Army Air Corps In October, 1930, two US Army pilots (in separate aircraft) left Victoria, BC with signed copies of the 1930 London Naval Treaty.   2nd Lieutenant William W. Caldwell, an Army Air Corps reserve pilot with the 95th Pursuit Squadron, was escorting the second courier plane which was transporting Japan's ratification document for the treaty.  There was a deadline to meet; if the document was not filed in London within a certain time frame, the entire treaty would be nullified before it ever got ratified. The treaty papers had been brought across the Pacific by sea, and the two pilots were to deliver them to New York City where they would be put back aboard another ship and dispatched to London.   Experienced, journeyman fliers have a term for that kind of pressure. They call it “get-there-it is" and it's an often fatal disease. Time pressure (hurry and impatience) has been a killer of pilots and a destroyer of airplanes ever since Orville made that first flight; 1930 was only 27 years after the Wright brothers and none of the advances of the 1930s and WWII years in all-weather flying had yet been accomplished on any wide scale.  These two pilots were lucky to even have enclosed cockpits, if in fact they even did. The Fleetster came in many versions and some were open cockpit, some not.  Knowing the War Department, the 1930 U.S. Army probably had the most primitive and cheapest model of the aircraft that could be obtained.  A 1930s Fleetster Somewhere in central-southern Wyoming, the two ships and pilots ran into winter weather, a nasty blizzard that forced them down to tree-top level trying to get through (and unfortunately, even below that).  Forward-visibility was effectively zero. In mid-afternoon about 70 miles northwest of Cheyenne and 1.5 miles from a point on the railroad called Rock River, Caldwell’s parasol-winged monoplane found a fence post.  Death was no doubt instantaneous.  Searchers were led to the remains of the plane and pilot the next morning by a crusty old railroad worker who was stationed nearby and had heard the crash. The other airplane eventually continued on and delivered the treaty papers to the outbound ship in New York. William Caldwell, of California, died in service to his country. He was survived by his father who saw him buried at the national cemetery at the Presidio of San Francisco, where I stumbled across his marker while looking for another soldier's grave. Today is Veteran’s Day, or Armistice Day, as it was originally named in honor of the end of WW-1 and the soldiers and sailors who fought in it.  Today, I am thinking of all the Lt. Caldwells; those who have served, those who are serving, those who served and survived – and those who did not... and their often overlooked families who share their service and often their fate.  We owe them a debt that can never be satisfied; we have to live with it, unsettled.  It is a heavy load – but never heavier than the price they pay. Information about the death of Lt.William Caldwell was obtained from the New York Times newspaper, published on Oct 17, 1930.