San Diego, Coronado & Pt. Loma

Sat, Dec. 31st - Mon, Jan. 9th, 2012

View from Coronado Bridge as we arrive on the island.

This is the courtyard gardens at Hotel del Coronado on Coronado Island. In the center of the picture is a Dragon Tree from the Canary Islands planted in 1900. It was used as a backdrop in the Marilyn Monroe movie "Some Like it Hot", which was filmed here at the hotel in 1958.

This is a view from the back side of the hotel toward the beach. On the left you can see the corner of one of the pools. Just to the right of the palm trees is an outdoor ice skating rink. Ice skating in 80 degrees with a view of the ocean. Doesn't that sound like fun?

Walking down the stairs from the patio, we find several Dr. Seuss sculptures. They are part of a traveling exhibit that started here at the hotel in 2009. Dr. Seuss lived at the Hotel for a time. I think this one is from my favorite, "Green Eggs and Ham", or it could be one of those darn Sneetches. My very observant, three-year-old, granddaughter wonders why they don't have nipples.

Walking down the beach, this is a view of the hotel from the back. The basement is filled with shops.

It is one of the few grand, old hotels to have survived from the 1800s.

John's on the phone again. I think he loves that new Smart Phone, more than he loves me. At the end of this beach, we ran into the North Island Naval Air Station and a big fence.

So we drove out to Point Loma to see Cabrillo National Monument honoring the first man to sail into San Diego Bay in 1542, only 50 years after Columbus discovered America. He only stayed two or three days and wasn't really impressed. It was just desert and shrubs back then. I wonder what he would think, if he could see it now.


From up here on Point Loma the view of Coronado Hotel with the bay behind it, the skyline of San Diego and the mountains beyond is great.

This is the North Island Naval Air Station on Coronado Island just left of the Hotel Coronado. The San Diego Naval Base is the second largest in the country after Norfolk, Virginia. They were home to carrier aviation in 1940. The Navy is the largest single employer in the region. Over 95,000 military and 142, 500 civilian jobs to support the fleet. It accounts for more than 20% of the total employment.

On the drive out to the point, the road goes thru a huge National Cemetery with headstones going down the hillsides to the water on both sides for at least a couple miles. It's very beautiful.

As we got close to the point, there were hiking trails down to the beach. These are some agave plants. The blue agave plant is used to make tequila, which is used to make those wonderful margaritas. I can't wait to have one (or two?) next week when we go down to Algodones, Mexico for lunch, while we are in Yuma. I also hope to get new glasses in Mexico.

This is a close-up of those same agaves with a hummingbird buzzing around. They have beautiful red buds that open up into long, kind of hairy-like yellow blossoms. The agave is not actually a cactus, but is a member of the lily family.

This is another variety of agave. I took this when we were at Old Downtown. It's kind of like a small mexican village with some of the original homes and buildings from the original downtown. There are shops, outdoor restaurants, museums and a historic walking tour. We stopped here one of the days that we took the trolley into the city. We also stopped off at Little Italy for supper when we were riding the trolley and had a delicious pizza with sausage, tomato, garlic, basil and lots of cheese. It was probably the best pizza we've ever had.

This is another variety of agave. I took this picture in the desert garden at Balboa Park. When I went on the internet to look up agaves, they had 60,000 pictures!

This was another pretty view. We have seen these flowers all along the coast coming down. I'm not sure what they are, but it appears that they plant them to hold the sand from eroding.

This is the original Point Loma Lighthouse 400 feet high on the point. It could be seen from 39 miles away. It served 36 years, but they discovered that it was too high and often hidden by fog.

So in 1891 they built Pelican Lighthouse down at beach level and the old one became a National Monument.

This old fishing boat must have a good catch, as the birds were just swarming around and following him in.

A submarine heading out to sea. Lots of people were watching. They said they don't see one very often. The black line in the water further back is Zuniga Jetty built by the Army Corp of Engineers in 1904. A horn at the end sounds a one second blast every ten seconds and five quick-flashing lights mark the mile long jetty.

We stopped by one of the beaches most afternoons to watch the sunset, but a couple days there were surf warnings on the news with up to 15 foot waves. When we stopped this day the local news station was interviewing one of their head rescue guys. He was telling about how they had rescued a surfer who had lost his board.

The first picture was before noon and the pier was closed. We came back later in the afternoon and the pier was open and crowded with people. We heard a surfer interviewed that evening on the news. He said he was all excited when he heard the surf was up. He grabbed his board and headed to the beach. But when he got there he changed his mind. He said it looked like possible death to him.

But it didn't stop lots of others. There were lots of them out there already and we watched as this guy jumped off the end of the rock, right into the surf that was beating up against it. There are always lots of people out to watch the sunset, but there were even bigger crowds out watching the surf.

There he goes!

This was an awesome sunset over Point Loma taken from the beach between the Hotel Coronado and the North Island Naval Air Station.

Red sky at night, sailor's delight!

Next Stop, Yuma. Then Quartzite RV Show and on to Phoenix where our kids join us for a week.

I've blogged about Yuma the last two years, so there probably won't be anything new, and I'll be too busy playing while the kids are here. So there probably won't be any new blogs for a couple weeks or so.

Over and out,
Tarra