We arrived at our next destination at a Thousand Trails RV park about 20 miles east of San Diego. They did not have a full hookup site available so we were directed to the north side of the campground where we had our choice of several electric and water sites. They have an unusual way of providing full hookup sites, and we discovered that a reservation did not mean you have full hookup upon arriving. If all the full hook up sites are taken, your name goes on a list and the next morning at 8:30 you go back to the ranger station. They write on a board all the site numbers of people who are checking out that day. When your name is called, you get to choose which site you want. We knew we were #9 on the list for the day, and since there were only 7 sites available and many people waiting, we didn’t hold out much hope of getting a site that day. To our surprise, our name was the third name called and we chose a site. We went back and got our RV and moved to our new site. This whole process is called “Crossing Over”.
We very much liked our new site. It was a corner lot so we only had neighbors on one side and across the street. There was an access road near us which was used by the border patrol and it was interesting to see them come and go and we sometimes heard helicopters at a distance flying overhead, but nothing at all annoying. It was actually very quiet during the day and at night, and the only sound we heard was the occasional coyotes howling at night. One day we saw a couple coyotes roaming several feet from our campsite, but they hurried on in their quest for prey. We also found some interesting geocaches around the campground. The only problem we had with this campground is there is no cell phone or internet service with our Verizon phones. They provided free 30 minutes of internet per computer each day, with more available for purchase, but we found it to be very slow, and it still did not solve our cell phone problem. Several times we had to make a call and had to drive several miles toward the nearest town to make a call. We think this problem can be solved with a cell phone booster which we hope to purchase before possibly returning to this campground in the future.
One day we rode over to Coronado Island which is a resort city across the San Diego Bay from downtown San Diego. It really isn’t an island, but is instead a peninsula, and to access the city we had to cross a 2 mile bridge. Oh, how I have missed the water of Florida, and San Diego has given me my water fix. Hotel de Coronado is located there and is considered one of the world’s top resorts. The Marilyn Monroe film, “Some Like It Hot” was filmed at this hotel. Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of Oz”, could see the hotel from the front porch of his home, and some say The Emerald City in the movie was inspired by the hotel. Baum also designed the crown chandeliers in the hotel dining room. Because of this connection with Oz, Coronado is often called “The Emerald City”.
A visit to Coronado wasn’t complete without putting our feet into the cold Pacific Ocean. They had beach advisories that day because of windy conditions, but it didn’t feel that windy to us.
We finished the day with a visit to Imperial Beach where we grabbed the most south westerly located geocache in the continental United States. We could see Mexico in the distance and several helicopters were flying low overhead to patrol this section of the US/MX border. We assume they were border patrol monitoring the border. We have seen a lot of border patrol over the past couple months and it is amazing when you think about the amount of land they have to monitor.
Next stop: San Diego Zoo!