Our plans to spend a long-weekend in San Diego visiting John, David’s son, grew into a week after we decided to give Painted Rock State Park in Arizona a pass. As we were breaking camp Wednesday morning, a couple told us the park offered no shade and, once we saw how warm it was at lower elevations, we made the decision to continue on to San Diego.
We arrived late Wednesday evening fairly tired and looking a little worse for the wear after four days of camping, but that was easy enough to fix with a good night’s sleep and long, hot showers. Of course, a good night’s sleep is all relative. John lives just north of downtown in a city neighbourhood and the switch from sleeping in the quiet of the “great outdoors” to hearing sirens explode in the middle of the night and homeless people searching through trash bins was a change I wasn’t prepared for (David can sleep through just about anything - unless we're on the boat).
We made good use of the extra days to rest up, regroup and visit family and friends. The weather was fairly miserably all weekend with wind and rain, but it was perfect for spending the afternoon at the Natural History Museum at Balboa Park to view the Titanic exhibit, which was exceptional. I had hoped to spend an afternoon lazing in the sun at the beach but, with unseasonably cool weather, it wasn’t in the cards. Besides, if you’ve ever lived in San Diego, you know the last thing you should do is go to the beach after a storm moves through the area. All of the grime, grease and trash from land get swept into the storm drainage system which ends up in the creeks, rivers and out to sea where it pollutes the waters making it un-safe for seventy-two hours after it rains –and they like to point their fingers at boaters for polluting the water!
As always, we had a really nice visit with John and Craig but will be leaving tomorrow morning for Death Valley National Park where we plan to camp for several days before moving on to Las Vegas to visit Chris, David’s other son, and the girls … our final stop before returning to Washington and the boat.
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