One of the things that I forgot to mention about when we visited Fort Laramie was that the dread West Nile Virus had been found in the area and that it is spread by mosquitoes. Luckily we had some insect repellent with DEET in which we liberally applied.
Well, back to today. What a difference a day makes! We set out at just after five for the airport and we made it with no hitches whatsoever! Hooray. We left our car at the car rental return after doing 2292 miles in it from 26th July to the 8th August.
We went through the usual thing at the airport with security; shoes off all bits in the grey plastic trays; who ever makes those has made a fortune as the airports all seem to use the same ones.
We didn't seem to hang about for too long when our flight was called and we were on-board and off on time. The flight took a little over two hours but we grabbed an hour back with the time difference. Landed at San Diego airport and straight out! Went to the car rental offices and we decided to up-grade from a saloon to an SUV type. This one wasn't as plush as the other one but was the same as we had when we went up to Yellowstone last October.
After a bit of a fiddling to get the satnav up and running we set off for the historic old San Diego.
It's been done really well and it's not just a recreation of the original San Diego it uses the real heart of the old town. There were people in period costume and acting their parts rather like at Fort Laramie. After a short walk around we spotted that there was a walking tour of the site. We went around with the chap who happened to be an architect and did this as a part of his community service. He was absolutely brilliant. He gave us a really good run down on the origins of San Diego and its history. We even got into British politics! If anyone reading this goes to San Diego make sure that you go to this gem. It's something that Americans do really, really well. It's probably because they don't have much history that they have to borrow so much from their originators and treasure it so much.
We set of for San Clementa after nearly two hours in the old town. We had intended to follow Highway 101 so that we could complete our voyage along the west coast of the USA. It was rather hit and miss as the satnav kept insisting that we go up on to I5. We just followed the road so that the Pacific was on our left.
Stopping along historic 101 and went to an Albertsons, a supermarket, and bought some food for tonight and a little bit for the afternoon. Pulling into North Torres State Reserve. This was a beach area and there were lots of people. It looked like Studland Bay in Dorset. After eating our sandwich we set off and walked along for about a mile along the beach. It was quite crowded near the parking lot but thinned out a fairly short distance from it. The sky was blue with clouds lazily scudding across it; little dippers played around feeding in the damp sand of the shore line as the Pacific Ocean slowly lapped and rose as the tide came in. A few people wandered up and down; some were families heading home; others were couples; there were a few anglers; all in all it was delightful. We must have spend about an hour there before heading off again.
This worked quite well until we reached Camp Pendleton. This is a large forces base and we could not work out how to get around it so that we could stay on 101. We had to concede that we would have to use I5. So up we went onto it and spend 15 miles on it until we reached San Clementa. After one more wrong turn we found the hotel.
It could not have been more different from the Denver dump. It's internet access is brilliant. It has a good laundry and is close to the beach.
Over the last few weeks we've been eating microwave meals. By buying carefully we can have quite good meals. One little trick I do to cool white wine rapidly is to put the wine in the sink, surround it with ice from the ice machine and put water over it. It works very well.
Tomorrow we head up to... LA!
