A Short Trip to San Diego

We recently spent a couple days in San Diego visiting with Terry and LuAnn, who were house and dog sitting there. It was a bit cool and windy but we had fun taking one of the dogs, golden retriever Kaiya, to Fiesta Island's dog beach. Poor Sugar, a sweet older yellow lab, was dealing with some skin allergies and per vet's orders wasn't permitted to romp in the sand and water. 

Kaiya only wanted to chase the ball. She had no interest in playing with other dogs, try as they might,

The ring toy never left this one's mouth.

Kaiya waiting for Jim to throw the ball, again.

The funniest dog was Blueberry, a feisty French bulldog who grabbed the ball tosser from LuAnn and wouldn't let go.

What a face!

But the award for cuteness went to this Maltese who hid between its owner's legs for protection from all the bigger dogs running around.

One day we walked around San Diego University, a lovely campus with flowers everywhere.

  

Impressive landscaping

LuAnn, Terry and Jim admiring the fountain

USD is a Catholic college with tuition over $50,000/year

We just had to try out the big chairs

View from our walk

No trip to San Diego is complete without visiting a couple breweries. A friend of Terry's from high school was also in town, so he met us for dinner at Amplified Aleworks on Pacific Beach. We enjoyed the food and beer, and after dinner took a little stroll along the boardwalk.

It's always nice to see the ocean again.

The next evening we opted for Pizza Port, a brewery and restaurant in Ocean Beach that we visited three times when we spent a month in San Diego several years ago. It was as good as we remembered. 

Meanwhile, back at Jojoba Hills, we are getting ready to head out in a few days for Prescott, AZ.

Still quite a few flowers in bloom.

It's definitely Spring!

Summer Plans

We finally have a plan for most of the summer, which we hope will be a nice change from traveling in the Lazy Dazy. Terry and LuAnn have done some house sitting over the past year through House Sitters America, which costs $30/year to join, so I signed us up and put our profile on the website. Within a short time we got several emails from people looking for sitters but they were not in the right time frame. After searching the ads I found a three month sit taking care of two cats in Albuquerque, NM from mid-May through mid-August and contacted them to say we were interested. We had a Skype interview with the homeowners a couple days later, and after checking our references they let us know the next day that they would like us to come. We are very excited about living with cats in a "real" house for a few months. It's close to the mountains and just a mile and a half to the Sandia Peak tramway where there are lots of hiking trails. We've been to Albuquerque a few times but never got over to that part of town so we will have plenty of time to explore. There are also numerous places to play pickleball, both indoors and outdoors, and many breweries, within about ten miles of the house. 

After that we are not sure, but I suspect three months in a house will spur us on to make a move out of the RV, or we may miss it so much we continue on as is. We will see how it goes.

The weather has been perfect for being outside lately, so here are some photos from a hike we did with LuAnn the other day in Anza Borrego on the Pacific Crest Trail.

We missed the turn and realized as we were rock scrambling that this couldn't be the PCT.

We hiked over 3.5 miles from Scissors Crossing north towards Warner Springs. It was surprising that there was no PCT signage.

Agave in various stages of bloom.

                                                                                                                                                                        

     Many cacti are already flowering.

                                                                                                                                                             

There were flowers, flowers, everywhere.

   We spoke with several section hikers and two through hikers on the trail. At this point they are 80

   miles into their 2,650 mile hike.

Chia plant

The painted lady butterflies are still migrating so Jim had to wash the front of the car when we got home.

On another note, Jim spotted this balloon out the window one morning last week. Little did we know that just a short time later the world-renowned pilot would be killed during an accident upon landing about 20 miles from Jojoba Hills. Here is the story if you're interested.