The San Diego Botanic Garden is actually in Encinitas, a small beachfront town about 25 miles (40 km) north of San Diego. We decided to drop in on our drive back to Long Beach and it was well worth the visit. There were beautiful plants from all around the world.
The garden has nation’s largest public bamboo collection.
There was even a New Zealand garden which included a spreading pohutukawa to sit under and a manuka tree for the local bees.
Neither of us had seen a cork tree before.
We fondly remembered our dear friend Murray when we came across the clivias in the African garden. Murray has sadly passed but has left hundreds of his beloved clivias for us to enjoy, including some that we have transplanted into our own garden.
Across the bay from downtown San Diego is Coronado. Coronado is Spanish for crowned and its nickname is The Crown City. It is a pleasant place to stroll around with a long sandy beach and vibrant shopping district along Orange Avenue.
Coronado is most well known, however, for its iconic beachfront Victorian hotel, The Hotel del Coronado, which has featured in numerous movies including the 1959 comedy classic, Some Like it Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.
The hotel was also where L. Frank Baum did most of his writing, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He is said to have based his design for the Emerald City on the hotel and to have based The Yellow Brick Road on Orange Avenue.
There is definitely a strong surf culture in Southern California. Coronado is no exception, with plenty of surf shops and Volkswagens (the surfer’s automobile of choice) to go around.
We are on a mission to visit all of California’s 21 historic Missions (pun intended). The Mission San Diego de Alcala was established in 1769 and is the first of the historic Californian Missions. For that reason, it is sometimes called the Mother of the Missions. It is named for a Franciscan missionary who was born in 1400 in Spain and went on to convert many of the native people of the Canary Islands. He died in 1463 and was canonized in 1588. The area was named San Diego in 1602 by Captain Sebastian Vizcaino, following the custom of Spanish explorers who often named newly discovered areas after saints whose feast days were near to the time of discovery.
We particularly admired this beautiful colorful mosaic depiction of the Stations of the Cross.
Old Town, San Diego, is the site of the first European settlement in California, dating back to 1769, when it was founded by Spanish Army officer, Gaspar de Portola and Franciscan missionary, Juniper’s Serra. Today, it mainly caters to tourists, with restaurants, stores and markets selling Mexican food, pottery, and assorted other goods. From the number of ads outside shops, Mexican candy is particularly popular as is Mexican Coca-Cola which, apparently, is superior to the American version because it is made using sugar rather than fructose.
Commissioned just eight days after the end of World War II, USS Midway was the largest aircraft carrier in the world until 1955 as well as the first ship that was too big to go through the Panama Canal. She operated for 47 years and saw action in the Vietnam war and Operation Desert Storm before she was decommissioned in 1992. She is now a museum ship in San Diego. At over three hundred meters long (three football fields), it is hard to describe just how massive she is. To give some idea of her size, in the 1940s she carried almost 140 aircraft and even in later years with the larger fighter jets, she carried over 70 aircraft. The following chart gives a good idea of just how many aircraft that is.
There is a massive hangar that runs the length of the ship. Surrounding it are a maze of narrow hallways and small airless rooms. It must have taken the new sailors quite a while to find their way around.
Fitting in over 4000 crew and pilots, there wasn’t a lot of sleeping room.
Up on deck, there were a wide variety of aircraft.
Move over Top Gun.
Up in the Bridge (which is apparently called the Island on an aircraft carrier), an actual retired navy captain showed us around.
It’s hard to imagine that this ship’s wheel could be used to steer such a large vessel.
Signal Hill is the highest point in Long Beach. In 1921, oil was discovered there and within a few years the hill was covered with so many wooden oil derricks that it was nicknamed “Porcupine Hill” by the locals. In fact, during the twenties it was the most productive oil field in the Los Angeles basin, which at the time was producing 20% of the nation’s oil supply. Over 100 years later, many wells are still in operation which makes for interesting juxtapositions in the neighborhood, as pumpjacks sit side by side with restaurants and million dollar houses.
There is a pretty little park at the top of the hill with views that go all the way to downtown Los Angeles, about twenty miles away.
Downtown Long BeachDowntown Los AngelesLong Beach Airport with the snow capped San Bernadino mountains behind
At the top of the hill there is also a gated community of expensive homes.
Classic vehicle of the day is this camper van which is apparently on team Jesus.
San Juan Capistrano is a town in Orange County, about an hour’s drive south of Long Beach. We started our visit there by having lunch in the Los Rios Historic District, which is California’s oldest continuously inhabited residential neighborhood.
The main attraction in the town is its Mission. There are 21 historic Missions in California, established in the late 1700s and early 1800s by Franciscan priests as part of Spain’s efforts to colonize and convert the indigenous people of California. The Missions are spaced roughly 20-30 miles apart, stretching all the way from San Diego to north of San Francisco. The Mission San Capistrano was established in 1776 in the same year that the Americans on the east coast were declaring independence from the British. It would take another 74 years for California to become part of that new nation, becoming the 31st state in 1850.
The San Capistrano Mission is sometimes called the Jewel of the Missions and walking around its grounds, it is easy to see why.
San Juan Capiastrano is near to one of our favourite spots in California, Laguna Beach, so we decided to drive over there for an early dinner and to enjoy the spectacular sunset.
Sitting on the edge of the cliff is the first lawn bowling club we have come across in the United States. It is also one of the prettiest we have seen anywhere.
One thing Long Beach and Lakewood have is an abundance of classic American diners, so we have decided to start checking them out. First on the list was Heritage Family pantry where we enjoyed a classic diner breakfast of eggs over easy, hash browns and a side of turkey bacon.
Lauren’s sister, Marcy, lives in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Tarzana. Located in the San Fernando Valley (AKA The Valley), the land it sits on was once owned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, hence the name.
Burroughs led an interesting life. Born in Chicago in 1875 he graduated from the Michigan Military Academy in 1895 and having been rejected by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, enlisted in the Seventh U.S. Cavalry and was posted in Arizona. His mission there, as he put it, was to chase Apaches. “I chased a good many Apaches but fortunately for me I never caught up with any of them”. After leaving the cavalry he got married and moved back and forth across the United States taking on various jobs for the next eleven years. He became a cowboy, a shopkeeper, a railroad policeman, a gold miner, and perhaps most surprisingly, an accountant. He even applied for a commission in the Chinese Army but his application was summarily rejected. He also began writing stories. After having a number of stories rejected he finally found a publisher for his novel Tarzan of the Apes. The book was a huge success and Burroughs followed up with a torrent of novels, including over two dozen Tarzan sequels. In 1918 the first Tarzan novel came to the screen and to date there have been over 40 Tarzan movies and fifty television episodes. Finding himself increasingly wealthy, Burroughs purchased a 550 acre estate in the Valley which he named Tarzan Ranch.
The original homes in the neighborhood are mid-century ranch-style homes. However, as the area has become more affluent, more and more of these homes have been pulled down and replaced with larger homes of different styles.
Right in the middle of Long Beach is the El Dorado Nature Center, 105 acres of forest, surrounding a stream and two lakes. Our daughter-in-law, Kylie, guided us through the trails that wind through the Center. Along for the ride was our new grandson, Oli, who was experiencing his first stroll through the woods. The Center provided an interesting juxtaposition to the surrounding dry landscape of Long Beach. It was more like the Washington DC than Southern California. There were even aggressive squirrels.
