Birthday Fun at Balboa Park

For my birthday, Gail and I spent a day at Balboa Park, San Diego.  This was a first for me, and I was blown away by the beauty of the grounds, buildings, and all the wonderful museums.  The 1400 acre park dates back to 1868, and was built on a mesa overlooking the city.  Most of the buildings were built around 1916 for the World's Fair.

Below, is the Shakespearean Theatre in the Round, for open air summer plays.

 

This is the Spreckels Organ Pavilion.  The immense pipe organ is played every Sunday, free of charge.  The organ has 4,530 pipes ranging from pencil size to 32 feet long.  I can't wait to hear it!

Next, it was on to the Auto Museum where there was a special exhibit of woodies.  I thought of  Soren often as I toured this museum.

 

I loved the old and antique motorcycles having had motorcycles in my younger days.  I really like the visible mechanics, the beauty, and raw function of these machines.  I'm truly glad I survived my love affair with motorcycles without ending up paralyzed or dead!

This is a beautiful 1948 Norton Manx.  My first motorcycle was a 1961 Royal Enfield Bullet, also a British bike.  There were no Enfields in this museum.  The most amazing vehicle in the whole place, though, was Louie Mattar's 1947 Cadillac.  You must read the sign after this picture to fully appreciate what he did!

 

 

In the back seat is an ironing board, and toilet, among other things.

Running boards and wheel changing platforms could be extended out from under the car when needed.  Wheels could quickly be changed while traveling at 30 miles an hour down the road.  That is a shower above the front fender!

On the dashboard is a Turkish hooka, tape recorder, and full bar.

To see Louie's car in action, check out this Youtube video at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT8azxnVAC4&noredirect=1   Louie lived to be 99!

The trailer held 230 gallons of gas, water and oil, etc.

This is the Arboretum, an indoor tropical jungle.

This odd fig tree had fruit growing right out of the trunk!  We can't wait to take visitors to this remarkable park.  We also toured one of the art museums, and the Museum of Photograpy - it rocked!

Celebrations

We celebrated Valentine's Day with Gail's usual panache.  My relatives always remind me of the story my parents told, as if I had never heard it before.  "Mom thought she had a stomach ache from eating too much chocolate on Valentines Day, but it was really labor pains - you were born the next day!"

In the photo below, you can see Yummy Delicious perched on her climber looking out the window at birds - we are all bird lovers, here.  Penelope, our other cat, is out of the picture. Paco is the pelican perched on the counter.  He was a gift from Sarah over a year ago.  The collage on the wall was done by an artist in Oakland that we met, Thomas Christopher Haag.  I thought it would make a perfect house warming addition.  Gail is a cat lover from way back, and the cat's tail is a snake (you know I love reptiles).  Check out Thomas's website at  http://thomaschristopherhaag.com/index.html  to see amazing murals in New Mexico and Oakland.  He uses recycled latex paint from the locale, which varies with the community. 

Sunday Outing to San Onofre

Our house is beginning to take on a little personality, thanks mainly to Gail's stash of uber-cool thrift shop items, and other treasures.



Paco still commands a perch in the kitchen.

Sunday afternoon we headed up the coast about 20 miles to San Onofre, practically the hub and birthplace of Southern California surfing.  It is surrounded by Camp Pendleton, an active U.S. Marine base.  We often hear the muffled explosions of bombs, etc. at all hours of the day and night.  I pretend it is crashing surf.

The nice ranger at the gate decided he liked us, and told us to park in the no parking area next to his car at no charge and walk down the bluff to the beach.  The next car that pulled in he charged the usual $15 day use fee.  People have been very friendly here, especially our neighbors.

This is the fabled San Onofre, which is a long boarder's paradise.

Looking up the coast at the reefs/points that make up Trestles, a world famous performance surfing area.

There were numerous showers for surfers, complete with board racks and landscaping. 

Here I am checking out the sign that describes the different breaks that make up Trestles.

Looking back at "Church" while walking up to Middles, Lowers, then Uppers.

The engineers of the San Onofre Nuclear Powerplant expressed their love for motherhood in a bold way!

This is the view going by from southbound I-5.

At night, the effect is even more titillating!

Meanwhile, earlier in the day I got to take Penelope for a walk in the backyard.  Getting cats used to a new house is a delicate matter.  Penelope and Yummy Delicious pretty much hid in the closets all day.  Now they are strolling the house more, and starting to go outside a little. 

We are very eager to have guests visit us down here, and would love to show you some of the many fun and interesting things to do on the North San Diego Coast:  Legoland, flower fields, warm beaches, museums of all sorts, tent camping in our backyard, biking, golf, etc.  It really does seem like an endless summer down here.  Bye for now!





















Settling In

We have practically no furniture so far, except for the dining table.  This is one of our first dinners. The paintings were done by Gail's mother.  We will be rotating artwork on the easel.  Our style of living is somewhat like my college days.  We are trying to avoid buying new things, and instead, finding used items to use or repurpose.

We took a trip into La Jolla, about 25 miles to the south.  We strolled around the UCSD campus in the morning, and felt amazingly comfortable mingling with the students - maybe because we had no tests or assignments to do.  This is the engineering building, which reminded me of the school bus that teeters on the roof of the City Museum in St. Louis.

This is the Geisel Library on campus.  It looks like some futuristic space landing vehicle, or possibly an ocean drilling platform.

Leading up to the library is a serpent path, by Alexis Smith, constructed of mosaic tiles.

From the campus, we took a short drive to the bluffs overlooking Blacks Beach.  The sheer cliffs are 340 feet high, and a very sketchy thigh burning trail leads to the beach below.  I've known about Blacks from my surfing interests as one of California's premier breaks.  At one end is a nude beach, and at the other end is some very rich person's option to hiking down the trail.  It could never be built today, but the county lets it stay.  The homes on the cliff above are some of San Diego's most posh mansions.

This was one of the more modest mansions that had an interesting indoor/outdoor blend in the design.  The roof is all copper.

Moving In

On February 3rd, we finally were able to move into our modest, but sunny home, in Carlsbad, CA.

The previous owners left us with a landscaping blank slate.  Their style of landscaping seemed to be to lay down concrete and gravel, and build sheds.  Dreamers that we are, our first outing was to go to the San Diego Botanical Gardens to research planting ideas.

Gail taking notes while I photo-document.

Lawns are going out of style in Southern California, and succulents, cacti, palms, and bunch grasses are in.  I never realized how many beautiful succulents there are, and how wonderfully they can go together.

 

The above groupings were part of a display that mimmicked the forms of an undersea garden.

The evening light made the colors "pop".

There were tropical plants, also, like this tree with oversized flowers.  It seems that everything grows well here, even through winter.