Electronics

Before we arrived at Thousand Trails Oakzanita we had talked with a man that said recently the cell phone/aircard connection had suddenly gotten much better at the campground. They have put up a new cell tower nearby and we have very good reception here. If you look at the panoramic photo above, a little to the right of center, you can see what looks like an especially tall tree on the top of one of the hills…if you look at the photo to the right of this paragraph you will see that it is a cell tower disguised as a fir tree. I hadn’t seen these until we were on the road last year…they also have a palm tree version.

Yesterday we went into El Cajon, CA for some errands. Errands in a strange town certainly are made easier with Google maps. I knew I wanted to go to a Joann’s Fabrics for some cross stitch stuff so I found that and then did a search for a grocery store, a bank and Chinese restaurant near that address. Amazingly they were all in the same little mall! (a really good restaurant by the way) Then I found a wand type car wash and used the “street view” option to make sure it was what we wanted, wrote down some addresses, plugged them in the GPS and off we went! It was a nice little outing.

Besides our little trip yesterday we have pretty much just hung around the campground this week. We’ve been doing a lot of walking and our usual reading/computing/etc. and did go in to Descanso, CA for breakfast Sunday morning. The park is pretty quiet except on weekends, but even that will change soon now that it is getting close to back-to-school time. I can hardly believe there is only 5 days left in August!

Photos
Top: Panoramic taken while walking a trail by the campground
Middle: A house with a view and a cell tower tree
Left bottom: Wild turkeys roaming the campground
Below: views along the trail by the campground...the second pic is the bark of a Manzanita tree and the bug is a Tarantula Hawk

Julian

Our stay at Thousand Trails Oakzanita continues to be enjoyable. Today we met up with a gentleman we became acquainted with while at Thousand Trails Ponderosa. Don was our neighbor for a couple weeks at Ponderosa and is from the San Diego area. He suggested that we all get together and go to Julian while we were at Oakzanita, so today we did just that.

Don and his girlfriend Pat picked us up in Pat’s bright yellow mustang convertible and off we went. Julian is an old mining town that is now a tourist spot well known for apple pie. We browsed some shops and then went to Mom’s (restaurant) for ½ a sandwich and pie a la mode. I had apple/boysenberry and Dave had plain apple, very good! On our way back we also stopped at Dudley's Bakery and bought some bread, sourdough garlic. Should be great with spaghetti! We had a fun visit and it was great to have someone that knew the area take us around.

Photos
Above: Pat's yellow mustang convertible at Julian
Below:
1. Julian
2. Julian
3. Lake Cuyamaca
4. View point looking east down Banner Grade.

Hot and cold

I mentioned in my last post that we are above the 4,000 ft. level here at Oakzanita. It certainly makes the day and night temperatures vary; day time temps have been around 93 and at night it is getting as low as 43.

Before we arrived here at Oakzanita some people told us about a trail they enjoy walking here at the camp. We discovered it is right by our campsite and have enjoyed walking it. It’s not a long trail but lots of ups and downs. The path basically takes you from the B section of the park to the A section of the park, just in a very roundabout way.

The campground had a Hawaiian themed weekend so we went to the Luau dinner on Saturday. It was tasty. Just before the dinner they had a local dance school come in and do some Hawaiian and Polynesian style dances. They did a nice job, it was a fun evening.

Photos
Top: Panoramic at Oakzanita
Middle: Dave along the trail we found
Bottom: Cheye on the trail
Video: Views of Oakzanita

Oakzanita

We left Pio Pico this morning and moved to Thousand Trails Oakzanita preserve. It is about 30 miles northeast of Pio Pico, so a pretty quick trip. The park is up in the Cuyamaca Mountains at about the 4,000 foot level. Oakzanita is a bit smaller (around 130 sites), very green, lots of hills and seems quite nice.

Yesterday we went to a movie and lunch/dinner, something we haven’t done for quite a while. We saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and followed it with a meal at Filippi’s Italian Grotto. Good movie and yummy food! It was a fun outing.

Our stay at Pio Pico was great, it is a park we really enjoy. For the most part our days were taken up with walks, reading, cross stitch and computing. The weather was great and the people were nice…what more could we ask for? :o)

Photos
Top left: the morning fog at Pio Pico with the moon above
Below: Our site at Oakzanita

Just the usual

Nothing out of the usual going on at our house. We did go into Chula Vista yesterday to go to the bank and then to Costco. The worst part was arriving at Costco when we were both really hungry. We now have fruit and veggies stacked on the counter because there is no room in the fridge. Guess we will just have to get busy eating! ;o)

I had a number of photos I wanted to share with you all so I created a little slide show. Hope you enjoy it!!

Photo: a corner in Little Italy, San Diego, CA

Little Italy

Today we made a trip into the Little Italy area of San Diego. We had lunch there… very yummy, I had Chicken Marsala and Dave had (yep) Spaghetti and meatballs followed by tiramisu for two … and then we took a short walk along the waterfront. The San Diego Harbor is such a pretty area. While we were there a wooden ship sailed by and it shot off it’s cannons, wow was that loud! I’m sure it was a tourist thing but it sure made us all jump! There is the Maritime Museum located along the harbor, they have a collection of older ships that are interesting to see. You can actually board the ships, it is $14.00 per person admission, or you can do what we did and just look at them from the walkway. The weather was fabulous, and that sea breeze was wonderful…all in all a very enjoyable outing.

Photos:
1. Little Italy
2. The restaurant we ate at
3. yummy tiramisu
4. part of the Maritime Museum display
5. the waterfront
6. a wooden ship sailing by

A visitor

We decided to move the trailer to a different site here at Pio Pico. It wasn’t that the site we were at was bad, we just decided to move… easy to do when your house is on wheels. Anyway, Dave pulled the trailer forward and there was a good sized tarantula hiding under the trailer! We had seen a couple tarantulas earlier but didn’t have the camera with us…but this time the camera was within grabbing distance! So I have a photo and video of our little visitor. Pretty amazing, I’ve never seen a tarantula in the wild, kinda cool!

Photo: I had Dave put his hand down by the tarantula so it would give you an idea of the size.