San Diego, California

It's possible that San Diego has the most pleasant weather in the continental United States. The average temperature is 72 degrees due to a phenomenon called the "marine layer"...

We spent the night in Julian, California. They used to mine gold there but now they mostly bake pies and cater to tourists.

 We hit San Diego about 10 in the morning and parked at the 1,400 acre Balboa Park. It has 14 museums and the San Diego zoo.

 We had some of these at our home in Tampa, but they seem to thrive here. I think they are called "bird of paradise" flowers.

We spent two nights on the beach. The boardwalk has a lot of young "hard-bodies" skateboarding, jogging, roller-skating  and jogging...

 We see two more presidential libraries in this area. Nixon's is up n San Clemente and Reagan's is in North L. A.  Maybe we can see them both tomorrow?

 I'd also like to see the Sequoia trees and Maybe Yosemite again before we start back to Las Vegas and then Arizona.

The San Diego Art Museum was worth the visit.

 Downtown.

 Train station.

 The Star of India and Mrs. Phred.

 Mrs. Phred in Old Town San Diego.

We had lunch in the old Coronado Hotel on Coronado Beach.

Walking in to Benson

Benson, Arizona

We're staying with Jil and Tom in Benson before beginning back to Florida. I'm walking the six miles to Benson and back every morning at dawn.

I cleaned the pictures off both Iphones this morning and found at least one shot I thought was lost. This is my brother David. We are having and interesting end game. We both have seven pawns and a king.

This is a cactus on the road to Benson.

Mrs. Phred took a lot of pictures of the Grand Canyon with her phone....this is a window in the North Rim Lodge.

I hit a tree leaving our site in Show Low Arizona. My $1,000 collision deductible has disappeared due to a lack of claims over the last five years. We also have to replace the windshield due to Rock damage from Alaska...

Train tracks in Benson...

Phred on the North Rim...down 53 pounds so far...

Flagstaff, Arizona

Heading South

I thought that this method of loading and transporting an ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) was interesting.

We did a last hike on the Widforss Trail along the North Rim yesterday. The brochure says it's a 10 mile stroll along the rim and though a forest. The path turned out to be very rocky and mostly up and down at a 9,000 foot elevation.

Mrs. Phred did great in spite of the broken foot...she even volunteered to carry the backpack when she heard me huffing.

Nice views...

Fields of flowers.

We had a problem with the propane leak detector going off at 2AM last night. I shut down the propane tank and opened the RV door and the alarm finally stopped. Even perfume can set one of these off.

Today I opened a basement compartment and smelled a strong odor. Apparently an air compressor sat on a can of electrical contact cleaner and emptied it out...I think that's what caused the alarm...

Today we drove South to Flagstaff and bought groceries. We'll spend the next two days in Show Low, Arizona and then to Benson....I'm working on the trip back to Sarasota.

an interesting summer...Portugal, Turkey and Alaska.....Next summer we are looking to book an apartment in Kabul or Damascus....

What a woman....

The Kaibab Plateau

North Rim, Grand Canyon, Arizona

Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?

Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue

It's beautiful and so are you

 Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play?

-The Beatles

 

The Kaibab Plateau on the North Rim  is at an elevation of about 9,000 feet....it gets as much as 200 inches of snowfall and twice the annual precipitation of the South Rim.

I saw dozens of mule deer and a few coyotes on my dawn walk this morning....the I-pod was playing "Dear  Prudence" (the Grateful Dead version) and the sky was blue and the dawn sunbeams were making chiaroscuro in the tall pines.

 The Federal Government decided to make this area a deer preserve about 100 years ago and killed off all the predators (coyotes, wolves, bobcats, etc.)....the deer population exploded to about 100,000 and began a process of mass starvation....the ecosystem was badly damaged by overgrazing....not good to mess with mother nature...

We took a couple of hundred Pix at the North Rim yesterday....just close your eyes and click...you can't get a bad picture....

We had dinner and watched the sunset at the Lodge....

We got out of the car on the drive home and turned off the headlights....the Milky Way was a broad, bright swath in the summer sky....light pollution is almost non-existent here....

Somehow we have TV on satellite though the pines in our campground....I'm pulling for Andy Murray....