We headed for the Thousand Trails Pio Pico preserve in Jamul (pronounced "hah-mool") near San Diego on Thursday, a nearly 200-mile trip. It was uneventful except for dodging a few raindrops. For some reason, we have continued to miss the monstrous weather that has plagued southern Californis the past few weeks. I'm not complaining.
We've never been to Pio Pico before, so it was fun getting used to a new place. It is a very nice park, out in the boonies not far from the Mexican border. (Pio Pico was the last Governor of what is now California before it was annexed to the U.S.)
There is a very visible presence of the Border Patrol in the neighborhood; they even tour the park several times a day. They also make a planned appearance here every month and speak to the assembled campers. we attended the one for this month. It was very interesting hearing what they do and how they do it.
We had our usual New Year's Eve celebration---i.e., we ate leftovers for dinner and crashed about 8:00pm. We had been chilling a bottle of almond champagne from Wilson Creek in Temecula, but never got to it.
New Year's morning we headed for San Diego (about 25 miles) to have brunch with Barbara Coad and her friend Judy Wenker (whom we had met in Temecula) at the Hotel Del Coronado. I had last been there about 30 years ago. It is still a magnificent place, but teeming with tourists.
We were treated to the fabulous brunch by Barbara. Thank you, Barbie! We had self-parked in order to save a buck. The parking charge was $15.00 anyway, even after deducting for the validated first two hours. Ouch! Valet parking might have been cheaper.
I broke a long-standing tradition by barely watching football on New Year's Day. I had no particular interest in any of the games, since no team with which I have a connection was represented. But I did watch the last quarter of the Rose Bowl game, and enjoyed TCU's beating Wisconsin. I have nothing against Wisconsin, but, after all, I am a Texan now. And it's nice to see a small school win against the usual monsters.
The preserve has two distinct parts, the north side has no sewer hookups, and the south side has all of the activities. Due to crowding, we had to take a site on the north side temporarily, waiting for a site on the south side to open up. No problem. It turned out that the north side was a more placid area, and a good one for the dogs. But for a number of reasons, we still wanted to move to the south side. (The Wheelers were there and, of course, we rely on the sewer hookups a lot.) We were not able to get an acceptable site on the south side until January 2. It turned out we were able to get one about 50 feet from the Wheelers.
On Wednesday (1/4), we went on a 13-mile bike ride on the Silver Strand, the sliver of land that connects the mainland to Coronado Island. I hadn't been on my bike for some time, and it felt good.
Along the way, we noticed some California Division of Forestry trucks and men doing some work on the wetlands that are on the strand. It turns out they were replanting some of the natural growth. We mentioned to the boss that they loooked like prisoners, since they were wearing orange jumpsuits. It turns out that's exactly what they were.
On Saturday, we had lunch with Ed and Cynthia Wong at Pacifica Del Mar, a nice restaurant (located, not surprisingly, in Del Mar).
Ed worked with Becky at Sanwa Bank. Very nice people. Sunday was our day to see a movie in a theater for the first time in months. We chose The King's Speech, with Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. It was terrific.
The next Thursday, we had lunch (at The Fisherman, in La Jolla) with Joan Lewis, the former wife of Judge Ely. We decided that the last time we saw her was at least ten years ago. She's still a hoot, and it was fun catching up.
The next day, we had lunch at their home with Frank and Victoria Hobbs. Frank was a partner of mine at my old firm. He retired from the practice of law in 2008. The firm still carries his name (Rutter, Hobbs & Davidoff). For that matter, it still carries Marshall Rutter's name, as well, and he retired from the firm---but not the practice of law---last year.
Victoria just had a knee replacement, and had to take it easy.
On Saturday evening, we went to El Cajon, to the home of Richard Petrie, Honoria Vivell's beau, who was celebrating his 65th birthday.
There was quite a group of his friends there---mostly current and former bankers. Becky actually knew a few of them from her past banking career. We pigged out on Mexican food. Yum!
Sunday was our last day here, and we relaxed, watch a little football (at least I did, while Becky was busy with the dogs), and prepared for the Monday move to the Thousand Trails Wilderness Lakes Preserve, in Menifee (near Temecula).
