From the heat of the desert, back to the cool ocean breezes of Orange County, and then some.
Hello Folks,
We hear that New Hampshire’s temperature at 6:23 a.m.this morning was down to 15 degrees. We know this because B’s game cam recorded it. That is a bit chilly. But my understanding is the temperature got up to about 70 degrees today. Good for them.
When we left Borrego Springs yesterday around 11:00 a.m., it was a lovely day and much cooler with a temperature of 76 degrees and very windy. B thought the coolness came from high winds blowing the cold air and clouds from the ocean up and over the mountains. The ride back to Orange County was much more enjoyable with that temperature, especially with no AC. We planned to stop in Julian on our way home.
Julian is a lovely, small town of about 1800 people, known as the apple capital of California. There are beef ranches, not like you see out in Texas, but very lovely, with many acres of green grass, rolling hills, and scattered trees. Also, the Pacific Crest Trail cuts through Julian, so lots of hikers. Julian sits up on a hill with funky shops and quaint restaurants. Almost all serve apple pie, courtesy of being the apple capital. Frankly, I don’t think their apple pie is nearly as good as apple pies made with New England apples. Haha. But anyway, the apple thing generates a lot of sales for them. Also, with the PCT hikers coming through, the town does pretty well for itself.
I always ask that we stop in Julian for lunch, so we did. Funny thing is, we were now almost 4500 feet above sea level and I had to wear B’s down vest just to get out of the van! It was windy and very cool; mid 40s. The Salton Sea, by contrast, is a couple hundred feet below sea level.
The place we have eaten in previously appeared to be closed, so we ate at the Soups and Such Cafe with flowers by Lani. That seemed like a strange combo, lunch and a flower/plant store. Anyway, by then I needed hot tea and I didn’t get the customary tea in a bag of tepid water that one usually gets in an eating establishment. Instead, I got a little small pot of black tea (I had a choice and chose Earl Grey, as I at least knew what that tasted like), I needed some hot tea!
I thought you would like to see a picture I took while B was washing his hands.
And B snapped this picture of me with my very own pot of tea!
By the way, lunch was very good. The day’s special was half a Reuben sandwich with both a small cup of soup and a house salad. I tried the Thai chili soup and B went for the French onion. As it was, the Thai chili soup was delicious, but a tad too spicy for me, so B finished it while I ate the dregs of his French onion soup!
Anyway, there were plenty of funky looking people having lunch. Luckily, they sat us at a table near the plants! Perhaps we didn’t look the type to be hiking!
Then it was on to Orange County and Westminster. The traffic wasn’t too bad. We were, after all, hauling a trailer and motorcycle behind us. B limits his towing speed to 70, to avoid spinning the trailer tires too fast. The weather remained cool and very breezy on the drive back here.
We made a pit stop on our way home. B pulled into a rest area/truck stop on Camp Pendleton, the likes of which I had never seen. We’ve been by it many times, but it sits off the highway behind trees, so you can’t see it from the 5 freeway. The place was huge, with dozens of big trucks and many, many cars! It even had areas of flowers. B took this picture of me.
Back on the road again. Then it was drive to the garage and unload all the stuff we’d hauled to Borrego Springs, before getting back to the room. We were both tired and we were in for the night. No supper; we had a large lunch.
Today (Friday) we woke to the usual marine layer, but it soon dissipated and, although a breezy day, it was sunny. A beautiful day. As B LOVES to say “hot sun and a coooool breeze”. We went back to the Magnolia Cafe for breakfast. The place is really incredible. The usual weekday crowd is the “white hairs” like us and everyone seems to know the staff or, rather, the staff seems to know everyone. No exception with us! The person seating us, as well as our waitress, remembered us! Incredible.
After breakfast, we went next door to the restaurant to a pet fish shop B saw. It didn’t sound very interesting to me, but it sure was! The inside was huge, with row after row of tanks filled with the most amazing sea life; fish of all sizes, shapes, and colors, a lot of living corals; this was definitely not your little guppies and goldfish shop. It was like going to an aquarium, except it was free (to look – the fish and other creatures were quite expensive).
Then back to the room to do a little research. Coincidentally, I had woken up thinking that we had mentioned going to the Long Beach aquarium. The technical name for it is Aquarium of the Pacific. We think we went there many years ago, but neither of us could remember the details.
So, B looked it up online and ordered our tickets. He chose 1:00 p.m. as the arrival time. They have arrival time reservations, to keep the flow of people even. By the way, nothing out here is cheap. The tickets, even with our senior discount, were $42 EACH, plus another $6 (after validation discount) to use the parking garage. So we had to have our parking ticket validated by the aquarium folks before leaving the building. However, the aquarium seemed like a fun thing to do and it was.
Getting there was not such a fun thing. First it was one freeway then, because the aquarium was down near the port with ships coming in loaded with containers, we got on a trucking route for a short distance. Jeez, that was fun. Some stop and go, not too bad. Finally, we landed at the parking garage safe and sound.
The weather was perfect. Blue, blue skies, a nice cool ocean breeze, and plenty of sunshine. Here is a picture B took before we entered the building. I thought the building looked like a giant peanut, but I think it is supposed to represent water!
What we didn’t expect was a million small children! Hordes of small children all screaming and laughing as only young kids can do. There were dozens of school bus loads of kids, and even more seemed to come in waves. Can you imagine chaperoning a bus load of 5-6 year old kids and keeping track of them??? Makes me shudder.
Plus, there were tons of families with kids in strollers and kids tagging along. The acoustics were awful, and the kids were doing a lot of yelling and shrieking. Of all times to leave the ear plugs in the room!
However, we still enjoyed the aquarium immensely. Here are some pictures of our favorite things.
There was a giant window that wrapped around both sides of the aisle with all kinds of interesting creatures. B waited a long time to get this picture!
Another picture of a ray. This was resting on the bottom of the exhibit which made getting a picture even easier.
These are pictures of the jellies, as I called them. One is the Lion’s Mane Jelly and the other interesting creature is the Warty Comb Jelly. Very interesting.
PICTURE – Lion’s mane jelly
Warty comb jelly
B tried to get a picture of the octopus but it was just too difficult to get a picture of. We also watched sea lions and seals swimming by, inches from our faces.
And finally, one of my very favorites, seahorses.
By then, it was time to head home. So we got the precious parking ticket validated and found our van quite easily. Then it was time to head back. Back on the trucking route out of the Long Beach loading docks and back on the freeway to home.
After resting for a bit in our room, we looked for dining options. We decided to go to an Italian place named Renato’s; again, in a strip mall. It has a great reputation. I called for reservations for 6:00 p.m. We got there and got seated, but in comes a table for 10; mostly old people who, like us, can’t hear anything. But the topping on the cake was a young couple who came in with two small children to join the old folks. One child was probably 3 and one was in a baby carriage all wrapped up so you couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a baby, but our hunch was it was a baby. They had very little room to sit once the baby carriage arrived, and the guy with the baby carriage was sitting closer to me than B was! I just knew we wouldn’t be able to hear anything we said to each other, and we didn’t care much for the guy sitting practically in my lap. We both feared the kids would soon start yelling, shrieking, and crying, too, so I tried very hard to discreetly ask for another table. Although almost all the tables were full, they did have a lovely porch with many plants and with heaters. Heaters are a big thing for outdoor eating here in California. The staff was very accommodating. We don’t very often eat out, so for us to go to a nice Italian restaurant for a relaxing meal is a big deal. It was also our delayed anniversary dinner.
We had the most enjoyable meal. Here are a few pictures from tonight’s dinner.
Karla with appetizers
B with main course – linguini with shrimp and scallops
me with desserts
We again split the main entree after ordering the stuffed mushrooms appetizer. But for a change, we each ordered dessert. B brought home about half of his tiramisu, and I gobbled down my canoli with a little help from B. The desserts were truly magnificent!
So, that ends Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow we plan to take an Uber ride to Seal Beach (a small coastal town) to the 36th annual car show. Should be interesting. We are taking an Uber because B says parking in a small beach town is already hell without adding in hundreds of cars of car show attendees. I liked the Uber idea better than B’s other plan for going into places with horrible parking; park a couple miles out and ride a bicycle in. That’s how we always do it when we go to Venice Beach. We plan to eat there in Seal Beach, so no breakfast for us.
Stay well.
The Clampetts 