Monday 23rd Feb: Balboa Park

This has to be one of the most stunning parks anywhere. It’s the USA’s largest urban cultural park and was created in 1915 to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal. It contains 15 major museums, performing arts venues, beautiful gardens, and the San Diego Zoo.

This is the impressive central mall.

Along this elegant walkway one passes magnificent buildings in the classical Spanish style, for example.

Some of the gardens run beside the mall. This one contains geometric beds and small fountains that reminded us of the Alhambra in Granada. All part of California’s Spanish heritage: just as well it wasn’t the Egyptians or they’d all be slabby pyramids.

This is another view, looking from the main mall to the orchid house that is our next port of call.

My photos can’t do justice to the huge variety of orchids on display. This is probably as close as it gets with this starfish orchid. That’s my description of it- I don’t really know what it’s called and it wasn’t labelled. It’s one of over 22,000 different orchid species in the world so my internet info tells me, so your chances of guessing the right one are about the same as winning the lottery.

It was such a lovely day we decided to stay outside rather than visit the museums, so more gardens now, the Japanese Friendship Garden. It’s sponsored by Yokohama city, which is San Diego’s sister city and hence the ‘Friendship’ bit of its name. The object is to create a space of tranquillity through harmony. This is a good example using a stream, rocks and a bridge. Might there be a modern designer who could create this sort of serenity using plastic bags, used beer cans and a gutter?

The Japanese Garden was created with the rest of the park in 1915 but at a different location and with a Japanese tea house. This was run successfully by a local Japanese family for 30 years, until 1942, when all United States residents of Japanese origin were interned following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941.The garden and tea house was revived in 1955 at its present site with the involvement of the city of Yokohama.

Now another delicate and expected element- bonsai. This is one of the many tiny trees on show in a wooden arbour.

The main garden trees weren’t generally in blossom, to show the garden at its best, but we came across one that was so gives some idea of how it would look. The garden is built on different, steep levels, which adds to the idea of being immersed in a peaceful setting. You also need to watch you don’t end up at the bottom of the peaceful setting sooner than you planned.

We walked back through the main thoroughfare of the Park to catch the bus back to the campsite, stopping to take in just one more beautiful Spanish-style view.

This had been a delightful day out, and we could have spent many more days discovering the Park’s numerous other attractions.

Fri 20th Feb: USS Midway

The USS Midway is an aircraft carrier. “She”, as all ships are referred to, was commissioned in September 1945 and named after the WW2 battle of Midway Island in 1942 where the US navy decisively defeated the Japanese. The Midway was retired in 1992 and became a floating museum in 2004.

Here she is- the vessel that is, rather than the dubious looking ‘hello sailor’ type on the sidewalk. And we’ve no time see him perform the hornpipe today; let’s go aboard.

The entrance leads into the hanger deck. It’s huge and seems to run almost the full length and breadth of the ship. Here there are examples of the first aircraft that used the carrier, piston engine WW2 types. This is where we also picked up our audio guides that came included in the very reasonable entrance price.

Following the numbered guide, we proceeded into the ordinary crewmen’s quarters. These looked cramped, to say the least, even though she was the biggest ship in the world for her first 10 years, but a crew of 4,500 takes some accommodating. You’ll note they are triple bunks, with lockers in the middle. There’s hardly room for the traditional pin-ups.

One doesn’t give much thought to crew discipline but with 4,500 vigorous males living in close proximity there have to be in issues. The most severe penalty was prison, called the brig in navy parlance, where offenders would be locked up by order of the captain. There were individual cells and a communal cell, which is the one shown in the photo. The layout of the cell bunks actually gives the prisoners more space than the law abiding seamen when you compare it with the previous photo!

Men are fascinated by big machinery. So I’m transfixed by the anchor chains, 2,000 ft. long and attached to 20 ton anchors. Apparently the noise of the rattling chains was deafening when the anchors were dropped.

Good food was provided for all ranks: self-service for crewmen, and in impressive elegance for the officers. Notice the silver service in the glass cabinet that would have been used for formal occasions. No salt beef and hard tack biscuits for these guys.

The whole purpose of the ship was to provide air strike capability. To that end, some 200 pilots were available to fly the assorted complement of 70 or so planes and helicopters. In the Vietnam War they might have flown this Skyhawk, currently patrolling over the café area. 

The Midway was in service for 47 years, with several major refits along the way. It started as a 45,000 ton ship and ended weighing 69,000 tons. One of the ex-navy guides on the ship said that she ended up being top heavy. I wonder if the captain had to sometimes announce, “Sorry lads, bit of a swell today, so we’ll not be leaving port. We can’t risk capsizing.”

The ship always carried top of the range strike aircraft of the day, finishing with the 1,500 mile per hour Tomcat fighter that featured in the movie Top Gun.

This is the communications room where intelligence was received and messages sent. It looks old fashioned now and probably all of it would fit in a modern laptop computer. This was the nerve centre of the ship as you will have guessed from the nervous figure in the background.

The Operations Room shows the original maps used in planning the first Gulf War. The Midway was the command centre for the military task force so contained an admiral as well as a ship’s captain. 

The admiral and captain occupied similar private accommodation aboard, well up to best hotel standards. They were the only personnel to sleep in ordinary beds. The Admiral’s lounge gives an idea of the sort of comfort afforded.

There were many more areas on the audio tour e.g. kitchens, operating theatre, dentists, laundry, engine room, chapel, briefing rooms and so on, all well laid out and described. It was a full and fascinating day out and a tribute to its creators and to those who now operate the Midway Museum.

Wed 18th Feb: San Diego

We travel 170 miles to “Campland on the Bay" in San Diego without incident.

The following day we catch the bus to San Diego Old Town, which is a California State Park and consists of restored and reconstructed buildings dating mainly from the 1820’s to the 1870’s. The object of the park is to present a range of different living styles and capture something of the atmosphere of what life was like for residents of San Diego during that era. Naturally, parts of the town resemble the cowboy towns we remember from westerns, but the Park structures have a proper historical base rather than being simply a film set.

The building nearest in the above photo is the Racine and Laramie tobacco store, reconstructed faithfully as it was in 1869. Inside were all the appropriate products that gave it a truly authentic feel, including tobacco pipes of all qualities from many parts of the world.

There are too many buildings to describe in detail, so I’ll select a few, starting with the Wells Fargo History Museum. The exhibits contained a genuine 1867 state-of-the-art Concord stage coach that featured a sprung passenger compartment that could hold 9 travellers, with a further 9 on top. 

In 1857 the company launched the first trans-continental service, from St Louis to San Francisco. It must have been desperately uncomfortable although there was apparently a degree of acclimatisation to the motion sickness of the swaying carriage along its journey of 2,757 miles and 25 days.

The coach rolled along at between 5 and 12 miles per hour almost continuously with changes of horses (or mules) every 18 or so miles. I’ll never complain about Cambridgeshire buses again, even if one of the operators is, coincidentally, called Stagecoach!

An earlier and more primitive carriage, really a cart, was featured in the Stables Museum. The photo is below. This is a wooden carreta made in 1806 that reputedly carried a Spanish lady from San Francisco to San Diego, taking three months. It sported a weatherproof cover but no springs. The expression numb bum comes to mind.

The Stables Museum generally contained a wealth of beautifully preserved exhibits from the mid-19^th Century, like branding irons, an Indian feather headdress, patent medicines, a large variety of carts and carriages, etc. Just picking an example, here’s an exquisite, ornately embroidered saddle.

The earliest buildings in the Park date from the Mexican period, 1822 to 1846. These are made from adobe i.e. mud bricks. The most elaborate of these is the 1827 Casa de Estudillo, built by Jose Maria de Estudillio, a local administrator and dignitary. It’s a walled courtyard house that takes a splendid photo with the lady sitting in period costume in its pretty garden.

The cemetery reminds us of the tough life they faced in the 19^th century. Many died young from disease, and others violently in a manner that fits our image of the Wild West. 

The Park also contains an area of later dwellings, in the Heritage Park Victorian Village. These are from the 1880’s and 90’s, and represent the homes of the wealthier inhabitants, and fine homes they are too. You can’t help wondering if the house with the lookout tower belonged to the local fire-chief.

Towards the end of our meanderings, we pass a car park, and do a double-take. This car is totally decked out with Christmas decorations and articles. On the bonnet, too! The car bodywork is daubed with Christmas scenes and messages. Inside it’s totally full of Christmas baubles and articles, apart from the driver’s seat. It has to be Father Christmas on vacation. Surely it couldn’t be driven? But we actually saw it, impossibly, on the road the following day not far from our campsite, a good 5 miles from this car park.

It had to be a great day out: how often do you have a close encounter with the Wild West and Santa Claus in the same day.

Monday 16th Feb: Joshua Tree National Park

The park was created in 1994 and consists of part Mojave Desert and part Colorado Desert, 1,234 sq. miles in total. Next question- what’s a Joshua tree? We’d never heard of it either, so we’d best show you a photo. Everywhere we went there were Joshua trees, thousands upon thousands of them.

The tree is part of the Yucca family and can reach 40 ft. tall. It grows only in the Mojave Desert, and was named by the Mormon settlers who connected it in some way to Joshua in the Bible. The Park Ranger at the visitor centre said the park contains the biggest Joshua tree in the world. Our initial reaction was, “Gee, that’s really something”, until sometime later when the penny dropped- the world’s total population of Joshua trees actually grows here in the park, so one of them must be….

First stop was the Hidden Valley, supposedly used by 19^th century cattle rustlers. Access was along a rocky path through the jumble of rocks between the two higher outcrops.

Once inside, the valley floor was fairly flat, but circled by the granite boulder cliffs. Some of these were challenging enough to attract climbing groups, for example, the two small figures, top right. At least we hope that’s who they were rather than some of the OAP bus outing that took the wrong path.  

 Entering into the climbing spirit, I ascended a grade 1 difficulty tree (not a Joshua tree but an unidentified dead tree) for a photo. One of those, “I’ll take one of you, if you’ll take one of us”, type of photos that we tourists do at the drop of a hat. It appears that Jane is giving me a piggy back but I’m in fact stood on a branch all of 3 ft.from the ground.

Now here’s a precariously balanced armchair rock. How did it ever get there? No doubt it was used by the rustlers to relax in while looking out for the sheriff and the posse.

Leaving hidden valley we drove along good tarmac roads through similar rock formations and Joshua trees. Some of the rocks have acquired names like skull rock, standing about 30 ft.tall. A relic of the time when giants roamed the Earth. 

The road gradually winds up to a viewpoint at 5,300 ft. It’s a huge panorama, or would have been in the absence of mist, all the way to Mexico. Our campsite is somewhere down there.

The road loops eventually back to the main road and back to the campsite in the mist.  So we saw another aspect of the desert and very interesting it was.

On Wednesday we move to San Diego 

Sunday 15th Feb: The Oasis

The San Andreas Fault has some other side-effects. In a few places water seeps to the surface through the fault line thereby creating an oasis. Such an example is to be found only a few miles from the campsite: the Thousand Palms Oasis, managed by the State.

The pools of water are surrounded by Californian Fan Palm trees. This is the only palm native to California although a closely related palm from just over the Mexican border also grows in the oasis. Jane’s saying her palms are related only to her hands.

 Both types of palm present a shaggy appearance due to the previous year’s fronds falling down in layers as the tree grows in height. The walkway below looks like it’s passing under a (tuskless) woolly mammoth’s head. Notice how sturdily the wooden walkway is made, an example of how well the park is run. Even the woolly mammoth looks well groomed.

As might be expected, the park habitat provides a lush environment for numerous birds and creatures. Being a holiday weekend when we visited, the park was busy, so the wildlife made itself scarce. We were fortunate enough to spot a cactus wren in a palm tree near the entrance. It’s much bigger than an English wren and coloured more like a starling.

You don’t have to move far from the water source for the desert scrub to reassert itself. Within 50 metres we’re back to powdery earth and  bleached out thorn bushes like the one below. However, the informative park label states that it’s a dye weed, used by Native Americans to produce a yellow dye, something you just would not have guessed.

So an interesting visit, reminding us of oases we saw in Morocco.

We carried on after to Walmart for grocery shopping, and then driving by Palm Springs airport on the way back. President Obama had flown in the day before for a few days’ vacation, and I took an opportunist snap of his official plane, Airforce One, as we drove past. It’s a bit far away, and getting dark, but here it is for what it’s worth. We were hoping to take one of the man himself but he never dropped by for a cup of tea. There again, maybe we were out. 

Wed 11th: Desert Hot Springs

We travel 150 miles inland to our next destination, Desert Hot Springs. It is part of the Sonoran Desert and, with neighbouring Palm Springs, has seen much residential development since the Second World War due to its dry, pleasant winter climate. Summer’s another matter, when highs can reach over 50 centigrade (120F).

Our large campsite, Sky Valley Resort, caters mainly for resident and long-term campers but has a small number of touring pitches. This is our row, with our pitch behind the camera, looking towards the permanent chalets, with the desert mountains in the background.

Step just outside the camp perimeter and we’re straight in the desert. The whole area is criss-crossed by dirt tracks so it’s possible to walk indefinitely. This is a typical dramatic view of the sparse scrub and barren mountains. To complete the atmosphere, It really needs a lone, dusty cowboy with an Indian arrow through his hat to be galloping up from the middle distance. With Tonto at his side, of course.

But riders we had aplenty, cycle riders, coming past the camp entrance on the 100 mile Tour de Palm charity race on Valentine’s Day. Up to 10,000 entrants take part, starting from Palm Springs. These are just a few of the heroes coping with the inclines and 85 degree heat.

There is a good reason for the campsite being at this precise spot. It is directly on the San Andreas Fault which creates hot mineral water underground reservoirs that the site taps into. The water emerges at 140 degrees Fahrenheit and is cooled to 90 for the main pool and 104 for the jacuzzis. So whatever the weather, you can enjoy the water- and we did. You may, of course, wake to find that the campsite has cracked in two during the night, but everything has its price. The pools are located behind the landscaped gardens.

On one of our local desert walks we unexpectedly came across a local community centre. Unexpectedly, because we hadn’t noticed any community above a few widely scattered houses. Small community it may be, but with a friendly “welcome” sign. Immediately pulling the rug from under our feet, we spot the tree notice “NO TRESPASSING”, and then the one behind the cactus that reads “POSTED, NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT”. Maybe that’s why it’s a small community: you’re welcome as long as you don’t enter! 

Palm trees make good sunset silhouettes, so this photo makes a nice sign-off.