MIS AMIGOS and SAN DIEGO

May 6, 2011

By Monique & Barry Zander, the Never-Bored RVers

[Don’t worry. You don’t have to press #1 to read this in English.]

First, I want to express my thanks to all who wrote comments and emailed us to tell us their experiences of helping or being helped by other RVers. Some great stories, but maybe more interesting were two lessons we learned. 1) As RVers we are among friends, a very special group of people who want to help their fellow road-travelers, especially RVers new to the lifestyle, and 2) This is an example of Americans and Canadians at their best – giving of themselves, their time, their resources, to help others.

We’ll keep the phone lines open [well, actually, the internet lines open] for those of you who haven’t gotten around yet to writing your story of helping or being helped. Please send them to [email protected] and I’ll try to put a few together for a future rv.net blog.

A TRAVEL BLOG

We see lots of interesting, often incredible sights while RVing. I try to convey the real experience of places we visit. When we meet other writers and photographers, they like to ask what I write about. “I’m an ‘experiential writer’,” I tell them (which is difficult to say). What that means to me is I like to tell readers about the feeling of the place we visit rather than the statistics, history or what to do. You can get that from guidebooks, the local chamber of commerce or the Internet.

So, there we were on Coronado Island across the blue, blue bay from San Diego. Motoring down the interstate to this bottom-left corner of the U.S. is an experience in itself, particularly in the spring. Brilliantly colored flowers growing wild along the roadway had us oohing and aahing for at least an hour, and when they weren’t all that dramatic, the lush greenery of the embankments on both sides of the highway and up the hills and mountains was almost as interesting.

If you’ll pardon a statistic, I remember reading that San Diego, California, is the sixth largest city in America. Normally, we avoid cities. Oh, we appreciate being near a Redbox where we can rent movies for about $1 a night, but most nights we prefer to savor our natural surroundings, particularly on crystal-clear starry nights, or when campfires are allowed.

A Glimpse of San Diego's Dramatic Downtown Skyline

San Diego, on the other hand, is an exception. It’s downtown is beautiful, and the different districts, like Old Town, the Italian District, Balboa Park (with museums for every interest and including the legendary San Diego Zoo), Normal Heights, etc., each has its own cache and places of entertainment and enjoyment. San Diego is a Navy town with bragging rights as the homeport of the USS Carl Vinson, key Naval presence in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Sea World and the Pacific Ocean are both San Diego landmarks.

Back to the flowers. Whether we were driving through luxury neighborhoods or areas that had seen their best days a hundred years ago, there are flowers. They grow wild competing for attention.

As in many towns and cities, early spring is when it seems like every weekend is highlighted by a festival, parade, cultural event or holiday extravaganza. We were torn on April 30 and May 1 about which events to attend.

That’s enough chatter. I’ll give you a chance to look at a few pictures so you can get a glimpse of what we saw.