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.

Bootless in San Diego

Yay!!!  I'm bootless!  It's a little unofficially, though.  Let me explain.  I went to the orthopedist yesterday, Monday, to get a new ex-ray.  I told the doctor my foot didn't hurt and asked if I could drive and walk without the boot.  He was very cautious and said to wean myself off the boot as long as it didn't hurt.  So I tried to clarify and asked that if it didn't hurt, that meant I could walk on it.  He replied that I should use common sense.  What does that mean?   He said I should get it re-ex-rayed in San Fran after 6 weeks had gone by.  It is 6 weeks!!  So I left the doctor's office very confused.  Then after discussing it with Don, I figured out that I wrote on the intake forms that I broke it 7/15 instead of 6/15, so the doctor thought I broke it only two weeks ago.  So, I'm going to walk on it and drive as long as it doesn't hurt.  And I'll wear only hard soled shoes for the support.  Unfortunately, I brought around 50 sandles and only 2 pairs of hard soled shoes.  Guess I'll have to go buy more!!

We found the "cove" here.  It's a small beach area that the dogs can go play.  Don was using the chuck-it and threw the ball out a little too far out the first time, but Missy got it anyway.  Bailey had a great time playing on the beach.

Okay, I can't see Bailey in these pictures.  Probably because he was running around so fast, I couldn't keep up with him.  But you can see Missy in the water.

I haven't been doing too much since we got here.  Don is at a conference so he's away all day and I've been confined to the house until yesterday.  But this morning I went for a 30 minute walk and I'm driving today.  So there is no limit to what I can do today.

I do want to mention some of the fauna we have in our communal back yard:

Looks kind of like a pine tree, right?

Wrong

Notice the leaves (I'm using that term loosely)

Kind of succulently.  Then there are these:

These are the flowers they make leis out of in Hawaii.

This is a little shrub that has daisy like flowers blooming on it.  

There is some interesting plant life here.  And the weather is absolutely beautiful!  This might be a candidate for retirement.  Not in Ocean Beach (reminds me of Myrtle Beach), but some of the other areas.  We'll see.

Saturday in San Diego

We arrived in San Diego yesterday afternoon.  I haven't been writing here for a while because I'm tired of traveling.  I sit in the car and read or whatever, we stop to let the dogs out, then go again.  We're not eating right (hamburgers or whatever we can find) and I'm tired of traveling.  The dogs are driving me crazy.  We pulled over at an exit, opened the doors to let the dogs out and Bailey wouldn't come back.  We were in the desert in the middle of nowhere and he wouldn't come back to the car!  It was 113 degrees out there and I'm like "really?".  I don't care how much progress he's making, I almost left him there.  But I didn't.

Okay, enough whining.

We stopped at the Grand Canyon:

These are only three of the hundreds of pictures I took here.  It is an incredible place.  All across the US, I've been amazed at the landscape.  It's awe inspiring.  

But since I can't hike, we didn't spend a ton of time at the GC.  We drove around and pulled off at the various stops and I took pictures.

Then off to Phoenix.  Miri was right, it's hot there. You can feel the heat of the sun just baking.  There's no humidity, though so it's kind of tolerable.  But that's where I decided I'm done with driving cross country.  So we only spent one night there and really didn't see anything of Phoenix other than where we ate dinner.  Speaking of dinner, I had the most amazing salad there.  I don't know if it's because I've not had enough greens in my diet or if it was really an exceptional salad.  But it doesn't matter, I loved it!

But we left the next morning headed for San Diego.  I couldn't believe some of the things we saw out the window:

Okay, I was bored.  But it is pretty incredible.  The pictures don't do it justice.

But we're here in San Diego for a whole week.  The place we got was through VRBO and it's a cute little cottage.  One bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom.  There are 6 other cottages in this complex that all have a fenced in communal back yard.  There are 2 other dogs here so far and they all have access to the yard.  Bailey has so far gotten along with one of the other dogs but the other one is probably worse behaved than he is.  (It's nice that there is another dog that's worse than Bailey is!).  Missy has been great.  She really likes the dog that Bailey gets along with.  It's fun watching them play.

We're off to explore San Diego and to find the dog beach.  I'm sure there will be more pictures coming!