San Francisco

We made it to San Francisco!  The area where we're staying is wonderful!  It's about 5 blocks from Chestnut St and a couple blocks from the marina.  We emptied the car and took it to a garage and haven't used it since.  We walk everywhere, to the grocery store, to the bank, everywhere.  The grocery store is half a mile away.  After 4 months of this, I should be in much better shape!

We were so pleasantly surprised by the apartment.  We have stayed in some rather sketchy places during our trip and weren't sure what we were going to get.  We saw pictures of it, but pictures can be deceiving.  We have a kitchen (very, very basic), a great room and bedroom.  We also have our own courtyard out back so the dogs can go do their business.  What we don't have is television.  We have a tv, but no channels, only netflix and iTunes.  No news, no foodnetwork, nothing.  So, we signed up for huluplus.  We watched the news yesterday for the first time in quite a while, albeit on my computer, and not live.

The woman who owns the apartment live upstairs.  She has a little boy 2 or 3 years old.  She's very nice.  The floors have little to no insulation, so as soon as the baby gets up, around 5 or so, we can hear his running up and down the house, toys rolling over the floor, and even some conversation between the mom and the nanny.  This will get some getting used to.  When we met her the other day she asked if we could hear him and when we told her we could, she's been trying to keep the noise to a minimum.

My next step is getting a job.  Maybe I'll volunteer somewhere, I'm not sure.  We'll see what turns up!

Ridgecrest

I lived in Ridgecrest with my first husband when he was stationed at China Lake Naval Base.  This is where my daughter was born and I have some good memories there.  So, I was thankful that Don didn't mind making a small (?) detour so that I could go back after 28 years.

The Mojave Desert

Windmill farm on our way to Ridgecrest

More Mojave

China Lake Navy Base

They wouldn't let us drive in, not surprising

Where my beautiful daughter was born

More hospital.

I worked at this dealership.  The same guy owned both the Chevy delearship above (which is now a Toyota store) and the Ford store below.  The Blue Angels were at the base once while I was pregnant.  I was outside and walking around the dealership for some reason when from around the corner of the building, a jet flew past really, really low.  I looked in the plane and saw the pilot's face and I swear he saw me as he flew by.  I went into labor that night.

Ridgecrest has really grown in the last 28 years.  I couldn't find a lot of the buildings that I remembered  but that's what happens!

Leaving Ridgecrest we had to stop and take a bathroom break.  We haven't lost anything during this trip except for my pillow.  But we thought we lost Don's phone here.  We had to drive back and look around for it.  It was in a bag in the car all along.  Whew!  We also almost lost Bailey.  He took off smelling things and wouldn't come back.  Once again I had to weigh coaxing him back to the car and determining his survival skills in the desert.  He came back.

It's no wonder that when I went back home after the two years or so we were in Ridgecrest that I felt claustrophobic!

So on to Ojai.  This place is a major contender for retirement!  It's hot here right now but I understand that's unusual for this time of year.  There are some beautiful mountains for me and the beach isn't that far away for Don.  Hmmm.  Anthony Hopkins lives here I heard (but no sign of him yet).

We're making our last trek to San Fran tomorrow morning.  We've been traveling for 4 weeks so it's going to be really nice to unpack that car for the last time and stay put for a while.  I want to make dinners every night (almost), find a job (maybe) and not be hot anymore!  We'll send our summer clothes home and have a little more room in the car for all the things we're buying.  We're supposed to be buying Christmas gifts but we've only just bought things for ourselves:

Okay it looks kind of sketchy in the picture but it's really kind of cool.  It's two foxes made out of metal playing.   It's part of a wildlife sculpture that a local artist was doing for the city of Los Angeles but he had a stroke while working on it. The family is selling pieces of it and we came across this today.

It's been an amazing trip.  A once in a life time kind of trip.  We live in a beautiful country; from the mountains of Tennessee to the rolling hills of South Dakota to the desert in the southwest and finally to the beautiful diversity of California.  Everyone should take this kind of trip at least once in their lifetime!

Ojai

I just learned Anthony Hopkins either lives there or has been seen there. Anthony Hopkins! How can I act nonchalant if I see him?!

We're on to Ridgecrest.

Palm Springs

Palm Springs

View outside our balcony

View outside our balcony

People choose to live here

See the green things where they water?

And here

The dog park, they keep it very nice

Daylight out of our balcony

Desert where it's not watered.  See the palm trees in the distance?

We have stayed at some very beautiful wonderful places in the last month, this was probably our biggest mistake.  I mean, Palm Springs in August?  What were we thinking?

Oh well, we're going to Ojai, California tomorrow since we have two nights before we can check in in San Fran.  Ojai is where Reese Witherspoon lives and that guy who played in the vampire movies has been seen there as well.  So, on to better things (I hope).

btw, wanna know how to deal with the desert in the summer?  Movies.  We went to two movies while we were here and watched a whole bunch of the Olympics in our room.

Bailey gets a huge F minus when it comes to dealing with other dogs.  Missy has learned not to bark so much, so one for two.

Palm Springs Week Three

Let me try to describe Palm Springs.  I'm sitting on our balcony overlooking one of the two pools here.  On the other side of the pool there is a green golf course surrounded by palm trees.  Beyond that, far in the distance I see brown mountains.  The mountains surround this town.  They are breathtaking.  Driving around you see perfectly manicured, green yards (even the dog park has wonderfully green grass) , until you go farther out of town.  Then you see a beautiful green yard and right next door there is a yard filled with sand and rocks.  I'm left wondering where does this water come from?  How much does it cost?  It doesn't rain here, so how can people maintain their green lawns?  A quick Google search tells me that the water is delivered through aquifers.  It just seems a waste to me.  I remember Ellen telling our children "save some water for the fishes".  I'm looking at water misting out by the pool to keep the people cool.  It's very pretty, but "save some for the fishes"!

Let me talk about the brown mountains.  I had to drive down the brown mountains on our way here.  They twisted and turned just like the mountains back east, but I couldn't see which way they were going to turn or how sharply.  There were no trees to stop your fall if you should drive over the edge and everyone drove around 150 mph.  I drove 45 so I had to keep pulling over so that the other drivers could pass me.  Yikes.  I felt like I was on a roller coaster.

The place we're staying is more like a hotel than an RCI timeshare.  We're on the second floor and have to use the elevator to go walk the dogs a couple times a day.  That's a little inconvenient but the room is a lot bigger than the one in San Diego.  And it's a lot hotter here.  The forcast today is 106, Monday and Tuesday 111, Wednesday 113, Thursday 115, and Friday...117!!!!!!  Degrees!  117???  We went looking for sun screen today and the lowest spf was 15, you can find it as high as 70 and 80 spf.

The dogs are not liking it here much.  There's not a lot for them to do and it's just too freaking hot.  Don took them to the dog park while I cooked dinner last night and Missy was overheated when they came back.  Pretty scary.

But I made dinner last night!!!!  I haven't cooked in 3 weeks!  I love to cook so this has been pretty hard.  I had wanted to stop at the fish market on our way out of San Diego, but we missed it.  So I went to Trader Joe's yesterday and bought some organic chicken, quinoa and some yellow squash.  It was a plain simple dinner, but it was probably the best dinner I've ever cooked.  Our eating habits are starting to show on my hips.  Arg.

Bailey is really not doing well.  Today at the dog park he snarled and nipped at any dog that came by.  So much worse than when we left Columbia.  We're thinking we need to find a dog whisperer when we get to San Francisco.  This isn't going to work if we can't figure out how to make him more dog friendly.

Don's cooking tonight so I'm going in to make a salad.  Keep cool!!!

Palm Springs

108 degrees

Leaving San Diego

We're leaving San Diego today.  I have mixed feelings about this place.  The weather has been gorgeous!  The high every day is in the mid seventies.  We sleep with the windows open and it's quite cool.  There's a wonderful cove a couple blocks away where the dogs can run and run.  But Bailey has become quite territorial and herds the other dogs, and not very nicely.  I let the dogs out in the back earlier this week but heard a commotion so I brought them in.  A little while later I saw the local dog, Bear, outside so I let Missy out to play but tried to keep Bailey in since I knew he wouldn't behave himself.  He wiggled between my legs and got out and started barking at Bear.  I tried to get him back but the caretaker, Bear's owner, jumped out from behind a tree yelling at me to keep Bailey in the house.  He's not welcome in the back yard, that Bailey tried to bite him earlier that day and they don't allow aggressive dogs here.  He wouldn't let me speak at all so I got the dogs in the house, closed the door and have not gone out back since.  It upset me so badly that it kept me up at night.  Don said the caretaker approached Don with an apologetic tone, but he hasn't said anything to me.  I've had to keep my mouth shut so that we don't get kicked out of here but as soon as we leave, I'm leaving a review on VRBO's website and let others know what happened.

But, on a brighter note, let me tell you what else we've been doing this week.

Don had a conference this week and it culminated with a happy hour downtown.  This is a view from the roof top where the event took place:

After that Don was no longer obligated to attend anything so we spent the next day at the San Diego zoo.

It was a really good day, but probably isn't what the doctor meant when he said "use good judgement".  It probably wasn't smart of me to walk around the zoo without my boot.  Oh well.

We took the dogs to the dog beach.  I left my phone in the car so I don't have any pictures of them.  They did really well, for a while.  Bailey played with the smaller dogs but as time went by, he got increasingly territorial.  So we left after about an hour or so.

We have eaten very well this week.  

It was my intention to buy fresh seafood and cook here some.  That never happened, though.  We might stop by the fish market on our way out.  I'll buy something to take to Palm Springs to cook tonight.

Speaking of Palm Springs.  Don looked the weather up.  The high is in the low hundreds and the low is in the mid 80's.  Did I mention the high here is in the 70's?  So, I have mixed feelings about leaving this place.  But I think we're ready.  

Gotta go pack.