But it's time to head down the road, because we have reservations we are excited about on the coast of California. It's just a two hour drive to the coast, but it seemed like we drove through three seasons to get there. We started in the desert near El Centro, California, with the sun beating down on the motor home. It sure felt like summer! We drove down Interstate 8, passing by many miles of solar panels soaking up that sunshine in lines as far as our eyes could see.
When driving a motor home, a sign that warns of strong winds over the next 63 miles is not a welcome site. Most of the wind was coming straight towards us, and we watched as our fuel mileage dipped as we headed into that head-wind.
All that wind is good for another source of alternative energy, and we saw hundreds of windmills along the interstate. It almost looked like those windmills were trying to blow away the bank of clouds in front of them.
As we traveled west, we could see the mountains in front of us. We had been traveling in bright blue skies, but we could see clouds building over the mountains. In fact, we could see rain covering some of the peaks ahead of us.
Since we had been staying at a campground below sea level, we knew we had a climb on today's trip. Our diesel engine got its work-out as we started up the mountain road. With temperatures in the 70's in the mountains this day, we didn't have any problems with over-heating. But in the brutal summer desert temperatures, radiator water must be a much-used commodity. We saw many of these radiator reservoirs in pull-outs along the interstate.
As we're leaving the desert, the mountains that are starting to rise around us are covered in rocks. It definitely looks like summer to us.
As we got higher in the mountains, the temperatures cooled. The storms that we could see from the foothills were settling in around us as the rain started to fall. This was becoming a very challenging drive.
It felt like we had driven right into another season, as we experienced a thick winter fog. Our climb today was over 4,000 feet. We're guessing that the mountains around us were lovely, but we didn't get to see them.
As we started down in elevation, we were excited to see our destination on the GPS. After months of driving across the middle of the United States, it was good to see the ocean on the screen!
As we drove into the San Diego Valley, we changed from winter to spring. It seems like this is the third season of the day! The spring wildflowers are a lovely combination of yellow and orange. We can tell that we've moved out of the desert as we take in those gloriously green hills ahead.
With all this lovely landscape comes the crowds of people that are also enjoying the views. We aren't close to downtown San Diego yet, but the highway has 12 lanes. We're glad to make this trip on a Sunday afternoon when the traffic is light.
Mark did a masterful job of driving us from below sea level in the desert, up the 4,000 foot climb in the mountains, and now back to sea level again. We are staying at Mission Bay RV Park in San Diego and this is the view across the bay from the park.
As soon as we got the motor home settled into its new spot, we took a walk around the park. There is bay water on two sides of the campground, and we walked the peninsula trail to get a feel for our location for the next five days.
We learned that this peninsula is owned by the city of San Diego. Our campground is surrounded by a mobile home park that seemed to be deserted. We found out that the city had signed a 50-year lease with the mobile home owners more than 50 years ago. Understandably, no one wanted to relocate even when the city evicted them at the end of the lease. It took ten more years and lots of litigation, but the final home owners have just been relocated. Now San Diego has new plans for this special property.
The flower beds around the mobile homes still look good, and these nasturtiums were blooming beautifully.
If you look very carefully, you can see that we weren't the only ones enjoying those beautiful blooms. A hummingbird was hovering around those tasty flowers.
We continued our walk around the bay, where we watched a heron scoping out some supper.
The evening light also picked up the rich colors of this mallard duck along the bay.
We finished our first evening with a nice sunset over the bay. Even though it was only a two-hour drive, it seemed like it was a long day. We went through three different seasons as we drove from the desert through the mountains to the ocean. I think we're going to like it here on the coast in the spring.
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