Friday, March 26, 2010

Over the Mountains

3/15/2010



Packed up and ready to go, we head down the road on our way to San Diego. We know we will be going up into the mountains to get there, we hope there will not be too high passes between the mountains.
Our parting look as we leave Ocotillo Wells.
Only 86 miles to the Ocean. We will have finally gone coast to coast.
We slowly climb in elevation up into the mountains.
Santa Rosa Mountains.
Diane sees some flowers along side the road and can't resist taking a picture.
The road is becoming more curvy as we continue our climb.
Some of the inside curves make Diane a little nervous as her side of the nest comes close to the rocky side of the mountain.
Another tight curve, I never know what to expect as we round curves like this. We have seen signs warning vehicles over 40 ft to use caution.
We continue to gain altitude. Started the day at 100 ft. Now at about 3500 ft.
Its nice to occasionally see a straight piece of road ahead.
Sometimes you even go down hill for a short period of time.
Diane sees a big B on the mountain side. This usually means there is a small town whose name starts with a B close by.
Later she sees this K on the mountain below. You can tell we are getting up higher.
On the other side of the coin, looking up, you can see we have a little higher to go. I think we are up to about 5000 ft in this spot.
Some of the curves on this day have been so tight that we had to pull off the side of the road to let a big Semi by that was coming from the opposite direction and had to swing out in our lane a few feet to get around the inside curve he was on. This was done slowly at about 5 mph for both him and us. I feel sorry for the cars that sometimes stack up behind us as we often are going about 25 mph through some of these sharp curves. Occasionally, there will be a small siding that I can pull part way off the highway to let them go by.
Looking out Diane's window you can see we are up pretty high now.
The ground drops off sharply on this outside curve and makes Diane nervous. The picture doesn't really do justice to the drop off.
Looking back at the road behind and below us. It is nice to see trees and green again after spending the last few months in mostly desert landscape.
With me keeping my eyes on the road ahead, Diane snaps this picture showing we are just about to the top of the mountains at 6000 ft. It has taken us almost 2 hours to go this 60 miles. We thought we would be in San Diego by now, yet we still have to go back down the mountains to get there.
This is Lake Cuyamaca we past by as we entered the town of Julian, tucked way up in the mountains. You can see the snow on the mountains ahead of us.
As you can see we are getting up where there are fewer trees.
Finally, we get to the Interstate. It is a nice change from our curvy two lane mountain road. Now we start our decent from the mountains toward the coast.
Down we go. Our gas gauge is reading under a 1/4 tank and I am relieved that we are going downhill so we are getting better gas mileage. Gas prices have been high ever since we got to the California border. Gas was $2.69 in Yuma, now we see prices as high as $3.55.
Only 37 more miles.
More flowers for Diane.
Down, Down we go. I don't even touch to gas petal.
Lake Murray in the the suburb of La Mesa.
More flowers!
We are definitely entering the Big city now.


Our first sight of the Bay in San Diego. Looks great to me.
As we enter Mission Bay RV park, a nice sign and more flowers greet us.
As I register us at the office, Diane is out taking pictures of you know what.

Our view as we pull into the park, the bay is ahead of us.
After parking the Nest, this is our view down our street. It is all paved in blacktop. No gravel here. Glad Mallery has learned to do her business anywhere. What a change from the past few weeks in the desert.
This is the view out out front window.
Here we are tucked into our spot between our neighbors.

No comments:

Post a Comment