Friday, January 15, 2016
Over
the last few days, we visited Thousand Palms Oasis, Sunnylands, and Rancho
Mirage. We have had clear, sunny days with cool nights.
Thousand
Palms Oasis is an ancient watering site situated on the San Andreas fault.
Watered by a large spring, this is the largest grove of California Fan Palms in
the state of California. Waking through the dense stand of palms id like
walking through a cave. A fascinating place with a lot of human history
associated with it.
Sunnylands
is the winter home of the Annenberg family. The estate and gardens are periodically
open to the public and present beautiful landscapes, gardens, and art. We’re
glad we went!
Rancho
Mirage is an attractive and accommodating, upscale shopping and residential
area, in the Coachella Valley. Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert adjoin and have
streets named after Presidents and other celebrities, who own properties here,
in the gated communities. The shops are high-end with nice dining opportunities
interspersed. You can get a $5 hamburger for $20. It was fun observing how the
“rich folks live”!
Friday,
January 22, 2016
Driving
a route without any plans or schedule is an exhilarating and exciting scheme to
observ what surprises and discoveries are in store. Having made a three-day
circuitous route from the Coachella Valley to the coast, we were presented with
numerous pleasant surprises. Leaving La Quinta, we drove down Coachella Valley,
past the Salton Sea and then over the Vallecito Mountains to San Diego, continuing
along the coast highway to Orange County, finally returning via CA 74, the Ortega
Highway.
There’s
no mistaking Salton Sea because you can smell it before you see it. Below sea
level, it has no outlet and the salt content has grown to several times the
salinity of the ocean. It’s a beautiful place and the wintering waters for lots
of sea birds, however the resulting chemical and elemental contents give it a
“rotten egg” smell.
Ocotillo
Wells is a stop on CA 78, just east of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park,
(California’s largest State Park)with very little to see except old buildings.
One notable claim to fame is the Iron Door Bar, which Clint Eastwood promoted
on a movie. It does however, become very busy, thanks to thousands of acres of
off-road riding. We stopped for a cool refreshment but the store was closed.
Anza-Borrego
Desert State Park is 600,000 acres of spectacular terrain with exceptional
flora, fauna, and geography. It’s a destination, so we had to settle for a ride
through and an overview, as CA 78 passes through the park. The area was
previously covered by the Gulf of California, leaving loads of fossils and lots
of Indian artifacts along the ancient shoreline. It’s a fine park that deserves
a longer stay.
Just
west of Anza-Borrego we stopped at Julian, an 1850 placer gold claim (the year
of California’s statehood), worked by Bill “Cockney” Williams of England. Old
Bill was panning gold from the creek sands, when A. E. (Fred) Coleman, a former
Missouri slave, and experienced hard-rock miner, staked a claim and traced the
gold to its source, founding the Coleman “hard rock” mining district. Fred and
his wife also built and ran the Julian Hotel for the remainder of their lives,
producing the best accommodations and cooking to be found. We walked around the
old town and enjoyed reading the stories and experiencing the feel of the
historic site.
While
the miners were trying to wrestle the gold from deep within the earth, James
Madison brought a wagon load of young apple trees up into the mountains. The
fruit trees flourished in the clear, fresh air. Apples are still a big product
in Julian, many of which are used for making the world-famous Julian apple
pies. The gold is long gone but the Julian Pie Company produces an outstanding and
delicious apple pie. We had it hot with vanilla ice cream on top. “It’s
American as Apple Pie”!
The
1818 Santa Ysabel Asistencia is located here, a Spanish mission asistencia
(sub-mission) of Mission San Diego de Alcalá. Spain established the missions in
order to lay claim to Alta California but the missions had no legal
descriptions or boundaries, so they were doomed for lack of legality.
This
area is a good example of the dissolution of the old Spanish Missions, after Mexico’s
1821 Independence from Spain. The new (Mexican) California governors divided
the huge old missions into 2.2 square-league, land-grants (Ranchos), and deeded
them to friends and associates. Oddly, the rancho, land-grants had no recorded
legal descriptions, so they too were doomed to fail. When the Americans began
to arrive in California, they took advantage of the situation and got control
of the majority of the rancho land-grant acreage.
The
Santa Ysabel town site is within the former Rancho Santa Ysabel, an 1844
Mexican land grant to José Joaquín Ortega and Eduardo Stokes. In 1878, the town
of Santa Ysabel began with a rancho store owned by C. R. Wellington, and grew
to include a hotel and a blacksmith. We love these old towns and the stories
they have to tell!
Ramona California
has an interesting history, being an ancient retreat area for Native Americans,
traveling between the coast and the inland areas. Lots of Indian artifacts and
drawings are found in the area. Ramona town grew up along the stage route
between San Diego and the Julian gold fields. In the 1960s boxer Archie Moore
established a training camp called "Salt Mine" which trained George
Foreman and Muhammad Ali. The Guy Woodward Museum is a commendable collection
of historical buildings and objects from Ramona’s historical past. It’s like
going back in time and we felt like we saw an example of early California
lifestyle.
Poway’s name comes
from the Indian name for the valley but didn’t become a city until 1980, however,
its history goes back to Native Americans who left Artifacts such as arrow
heads, spear points, metates, grinding stones, and pottery found along the bed
of Poway Creek, which all indicate an early Native American presence. The hills
of the area are covered with huge, house-size, granite boulders that have the
appearance of being placed by some giant landscaping deity. Various pictographs
adorn many of Poway's boulders, and modern techniques suggest that these
paintings date back to the 16th century or earlier.
The Mission at San
Diego used the valley for grazing cattle and later the subsequent ranchos
continued using Poway as a stock range. American farmers arrived following
California’s 1850 Statehood and were fairly prosperous however, the 1954
Colorado Aqueduct and the Poway Municipal Water District bringing irrigation to
ten-thousand acres made the valley boom. The soil is well suited to agriculture
and with irrigation they grew anything that had a demand. Now, the valley has
specialized in citrus and avocados. Poway started an Indian camp, became a cow-town
and now an ag center!
Rancho Santa Fe,
one of the highest income communities in the US, has very impressive
architecture, landscaping, and amenities. It began as a land grant rancho which
was later sold to the Santa Fe Railroad (its namesake), for the purpose of
planting Blue Gum Eucalyptus for making railroad ties. The project failed, so the
railroad then formed the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company to develop a planned
community of country estates. Boy, did that work out very well. Nice place!
Torrey Pines State
Natural Reserve is the exclusive home to the rarest pine in North America. My
indication of the Torrey Pine compares it to the much smaller Pinion Pine,
having the open-crown, needle structure, cone, and nut, resembling the Pinion. Actually
the Torrey Pine can be tall with a large trunk. It sure has a nice, attractive
home along the sand bluffs of north San Diego.
Del Mar, “affluent
beach city” just north of San Diego and the Del Mar Thoroughbred racetrack, “where
the turf meets the surf”, on the San Diego County Fairground are mainly
seasonal venues where we would like to spend more time. This area has
attractions, beautiful scenery, sunny days, and loads of allures to explore and
enjoy. We checked out the beach but the wind and water were a bit chilly. Just
a virtual playground by the ocean!
Driving the CA 101
coast highway to Encinitas, Carlsbad, Oceanside, San Clemente, San Juan
Capistrano, Laguna and Newport Beach, gave us some terrific stops, beach walks,
and sightseeing.
While visiting the awe-inspiring 1798 Mission San Luis Rey, Brother Chris gave us an interesting history of the 21 missions. Afterwards, we headed back to Carlsbad for a hotel and dinner, a welcome retreat and rest from a terrific day of travels!
Our next day was
spent exploring the state beaches, sampling treats, and touring the small beach
towns. San Clemente had some damage from recent high surf but the surfers and
beach crowd didn’t let a few wash-outs spoil their day. We saw a few very
curious examples of full-time beach bums! We finished our day with a flabbergasting
visit to the 1776 San Juan Capistrano Mission. With preservation of the
artifacts, facilities, and history, the mission is a literal walk-thru-movie of
the “life and times” of the mission.
Leaving Newport
Beach, we headed down to CA 74, the “pines to palms” highway, for a mountain
drive back to Coachella Valley. CA 74 should be nicknamed the “Coast, Pines and
Palms Highway”, because it runs from San Juan Capistrano to the Coachella
Valley. This route took us up the San Juan River and over the Elsinore
Mountains to Lake Elsinore, then up and over the San Jacinto Mountains and
Santa Rosa Mountains to Coachella Valley. This steep, narrow road is very
scenic and sometimes alarming, with high precipices along the San Juan Canyon, and
180-degree turns around the drainages. Our favorite area was the high valley in
the Santa Rosa Mountains, covered by oaks and pines, making a natural,
high-mountain park. We saw Acorn Woodpeckers, probably migrated from Shasta
County and the Lassen Peak area of northern California. This was a terrific
excursion of southern California’s Riverside, San Diego, and Orange
counties!
