27 January 2007 Decisions? - Handling information and Communicating

One of the items which must be addressed is about computing: To buy here and take with us, loaded with info. Or to buy there, cheaper and less weight on the plane. Tricky.
Will should be able to get on line easily - many RV Parks have Internet access, but you have to pay for it!! If we can do it this will be the best way to keep in touch with family back home.
A laptop will be useful for:

• Storing Photographs/videos
• Communicating with family
• Getting information about day to day activities
• Finding a car and trailer
• Finding our way around (Do we actually go for a Sat Nav?)
• Getting legal information
• Yellow pages
• Campgrounds (Booking as well)

We will also need mobile phones.

The Next bookings -UK Car park and pre flight hotel

Now that we have booked the flight we need to make sure that we get the most comfortable departure and arrival. Economy class flying is now a horrendous occupation, so anything that makes it less painful is a good idea.
We chose Manchester Airport because it is only 2 and a half hours drive from home, has easy access, cheap parking and cheap hotels.
We have now booked a night before we fly, at the Travelodge. By booking and paying in advance it has only cost £25.50 per night.
By booking a car park in advance it has only cost us £147.00 for the 3 months we are away. We used Park and Go

22 January 2007 Research - Finding our car and TT

The Internet is very useful for finding information about the variety of important aspects of our project. I am trying to build up a background understanding of the area local to Orlando.
Today I have been looking at local adverts for cars and TT using the local free press. Why are there so many more ‘vehicles for sale’ ads? in Ocala (north of Orlando) than in Orlando.
Checked on the tow capacities of US cars to try and tie down which vehicle we want / need to buy.
Had some interesting information from a newsgroup contact about the use of Class B motorhomes which may be useful for a tow car. Also signed up for this blog.

21 January 2007 Our First Booking - A Flight and a villa in Florida

Our vacation started last Wednesday, even though we don't leave until March 5th. We booked a villa in Orlando for 3 weeks. We hope that this 'base camp' will give us the flexibility to find the car and Travel Trailer (TT) we want. On Thursday we booked our seats on a Virgin Atlantic Flight to Orlando. Leaving from Manchester on 5th March at 10.25 and returning on 29th May and 7.20 a.m. Got a good deal there (£320 each return). Used Florida State Parks to start looking at RV parks (about 50 RV parks included).

Also Happy Camper and Passport America have campground listings, but they tend to be more expensive ones.

A bit of background today - Why do it this way?

It has long been our plan to tour the United States.
Because we have caravanned happily in the UK for many years it seems an obvious step to caravan in the US. Now that we have retired we would like to take our time, not just 6 weeks at a time, as we have done before. Now we want to visit for several months, over several years. Sally has M.E. and needs to plan travelling very carefully, so we could not just jet from place to place (even if we could afford it). We would not want to travel much more than a couple of hours a day, with plenty of days off.
How best to accomplish this? Hiring is incredibly expensive, $350 a week for a car and $600 a week for a Travel Trailer (still cheaper than a motor home though). Motels are cheaper (Motel 6 is a very good budget motel chain, at about $40-$50 p.n.) but they are boring, give you no space to move and you don’t meet other people.
It became obvious that the only way to afford to travel extensively was to buy our own car and Travel Trailer and keep it in the U.S. When we visited we could tour and leave it where we finished up, ready to continue on the next visit.
When we started we had no preconceptions as to our destinations, but a number of factors had to be considered. On balance these pointed to Florida as the destination of choice. (may explain this on another day).
The timing is linked in with climate, a shuttle launch (March 16th) and our daughter and who is working in Colorado until June. Spring and autumn are the best times to visit most of U.S. as the weather is at its most equitable, particularly in Florida.

Oceanside

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We decided to drive to the beach and have a look around Oceanside. We found parking and a pier. Our simple activity was to stroll along the pier. Now Saltburn has a pier and you can have an exciting 20 minutes walking past the amusements to the end of the pier, see the seagulls and the Lone Surfer.
So why is it that when we walk along Oceanside Pier it takes 2 hours? We are greeted by almost everyone, fishermen, joggers, families.
Half way down we stand and watch a friendly pelican on the railing. We turn and watch the 50 or so surfers ride the pacific rollers.
The sky is blue, the temperature a pleasant 75 (22C).
As we walk to the end of the pier we watch a silly seal floating on its back with its flippers out of the water, sunning itself.
In the distance we see a large pod of dolphin swim by.
Pelicans are 'dive bombing' into the sea to catch fish, this is visually quite exciting as they fly up to about 40ft above the water, spy a fish and plummet downwards, with their wings swept back behind them and hit the water like a spear, coming back up with the fish (hopefully).
We talk to some people from Canada, arguing whether the floating seal is a seal or a piece of driftwood (of course it is a seal, but they are Canadians and don't have a lot of imagination).
We turn to stroll back to the beach and the sun is getting low over the ocean.
We pass the (now 3) pelicans posing on the hand rail and stop for a few pics.
I notice a kind of swirling in the water, like a whirlpool about 15ft across.Talking to a man fishing starts a discussion as some fishermen say it is a bait ball of small fish, others, a surfer, says that it is just the water moving across a sand bar. We all stand and watch it for about 10 minutes, without a significant conlcusion. I think it was a bait ball.
Meanwhile Sally is talking to a Graphic Design student at UCSD who is taking pictures. By now the sun is sinking to the horizon and I try and get some nice sunset pics, but they are not very good. The girl points out the house used by Tom Cruise in the film Top Gun. As we cross the beach we watch a guy with a stick, he is producing weird pictures in the sand.
We eventually get back to the Chevy and drive back to the trailer.
A very pleasant stroll.

Pelicans fishing - click here for full screen slide show

San Diego - The Review

So we have spent almost exactly two weeks in San Diego. In that time we have been to the beach at Coronado,  seen the Hotel Del Coronado and eaten in one of its luxury restaurants. We toured the huge U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier. We visited Loma Point, where Cabrillo first landed and where the lighthouse is, we also stood and watched whales swim past. We visited the Presidio Park and gigantic Balboa Park. We saw the Historic State Park and the Gaslight area. The highlight has undoubtedly been our sail out to sea on board America to go and watch whales.
We have really enjoyed our time here in San Diego, it has been quite warm for January, though the nights were still cool and it did rain on two days. It seems quite a cheerful place I think though that we found it to be one of the noisiest cities we have been in. The busy airport is right in the centre of the city, there are several military bases and helicopters are constantly buzzing around. There is a comprehensive Freeway network, which means that you are never more than a couple of miles from a motorway, good, but also noisy.
We are now ready to move up the coast a little way, we are stopping over at Oceanside before embarking on our cruise from Long Beach.

Balboa Park

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On Sunday afternoon we took a stroll in Balboa Park, right in the middle of San Diego, it is about 1200 acres of gardens and museums. This has been on our To Visit List since before we actually got to San Diego, but fairly low. Public parks are always good on a Sunday as people come out to just be there, Even good old Albert Park comes alive on a Sunday. Balboa Park is no exception, except on a gigantic scale.
First off we had to find somewhere to park, in the park, the only way was to actually follow a family through the car park as they returned to their car. Once parked we strolled briefly down the centre promenade along with hundreds of other people. We ate our picnic as we watched others out enjoying the sunshine, many were appreciating the sideshows, magicians, jugglers,  religious zealots, buskers (we saw spanish guitar, guitar and banjo, cello, steel drums, saxophone, another cello and violin) an outdoor art class and a display by the local rescue parrot club. Most were moving between museums, there are 14 museums in Balboa Park, like the Aerospace Museum, The Model Railway Museum, The Natural History museum, The Museum of Mankind, I have run out, but they are there. Or perhaps they were on their way to the San Diego Zoo, or maybe the huge fairground. Unless they were between gardens, the Botanical gardens, the Japanese garden, the cactus garden, the Alcazar garden, the Palm garden, the arboretum, the California Garden (sorry I can't remember all the 19 gardens there).
So where were we going, just strolling? Well actually no, we had planned to attend an afternoon performance by Carol Williams on the Spreckel's Outdoor Pipe Organ, with, as we were told by the curator, no less than 4500 pipes, from a 32ft bass to a  pipe the size of a pencil. The organ is a permanent feature of the Spreckels Organ Pavillion, a massive outdoor amphitheater which can seat 2400 people. We took our seats and at 2.00 the concert began, with The Trumpet Voluntary, followed by a variety of pieces which were great fun.
Following the concert we strolled up the main thoroughfare in earnest, stopping off to see a room full of beautiful orchids, as there was an orchid display, competition and sale. We walked among the blossom covered trees and Sally stopped to talk to the rescued parrots, well their keepers anyway. I spent a lot of time taking snapshots, it is a very photogenic place. We finished off by dropping in on one of the smaller Art Galleries, taking in the Reubens on display there as well as the priceless 14th C Russian Icon screens.
Eventually we returned to the car having had a really enjoyable afternoon, and we still didn't even see the miniature train or the carousel, or the replica of the The Globe Theatre. Maybe another time.

Closure for The Padre

Fra Junipero Serra in Dolores Mission Cemetry

The Indian

When we were in San Francisco we visited the Dolores Mission, while in the cemetary we saw a statue with a plaque naming it as Father Junipero Serra, by Arthur Putnam, however this was only a copy in cement. On researching it we found that it was one of a series of statues called The Padre which were in San Diego, so now that we are here I was determined to find that original statue. It was supposed to be in the Presidio Park. Now, as a part of San Diego, the Presidio Park has a long history. In 1543 when Cabrillo first landed at Ballast Point, just below Point Loma it more or less defined where a future settlement would be, however it is not until 1769 that the first permanent settlement is established by Junipero Serra, who went on to found other missions which formed part of the famous 21 Missions of California. The usual practice at the time was to combine a mission with a military presence, the presidio. This one was established on the hill overlooking San Diego, with a stockade and a small mission. The stockade was later abandoned and the mission moved to its current location some 6 miles away, the Mission San Diego de Alcala, however the land was acquired and became a public park. A newspaper millionaire called E.W. Scripps had commissioned Arthur Putnam to produce five statues depicting California, of which Putnam made three, for the grounds of his ranch. He later donated them to San Diego and two of them now stand in the Presidio Park, The Indian being the first and most famous.

The Padre in Presdio Park

The Padre being the next and the third was the Plowman, which is in the grounds of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.


 As I said earlier, I was determined to find the bronze version of The Padre. Originally Sally and I set out on the Friday, however the museum was closed and I had very little idea of the layout of the Park, The park is also very overgrown,so although I later found out that we passed within about 20 yards of it, we were looking the wrong way and completely missed it. So today (Sunday) I was able to find out exactly where the statue was and we went directly to it. It now stands on the site of the original mission in a quiet grove of Live Oak.

The Inscription in Dolores Cemetry

The Inscription in Presidio Park

This statue is called The Padre and is meant to show a concept, not a person, however it seems that at Dolores Mission they have mistakenly taken their copy as being a statue of  Fra Junipero Serra, which is quite strange.
The trail of this statue has led me to finding out some of the interesting history of California, two of its great cities, San Diego and San Francisco, its early history and the rise of the 21 Missions as well as its artists and patrons of the 19th and early 20th century. Great fun.

Whale watching on The America

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The weather today was perfect for our adventure, we took a trip aboard the schooner America, which is a replica of the the boat that was built to take part in the Round The Island Race from Cowes in 1851, as part of the Great Exhibition of 1851. This one was built in 1995 and is a beautiful two masted ship 128ft long. We joined the ship, which sailed through the bay, out past the headland and onto the open sea. Almost immediately whales were sighted and we sailed to follow them. The whales are still migrating south, so we have to sail southwards if we want to get alongside them. It is also apparently good to keep on the seaward side of the whales, as otherwise we may drive them out to sea and into unfamiliar waters. During our day we tracked at least half a dozen whales on their migratory journey. The boat was amazing, the weather was fantastic, the whales were exciting and the day was unforgettable.The story of the day is best told in pictures, so select the slide show view, press F11 on your keyboard for a full screen viewing (you may have to click on the little play triangle at the bottom and also slow down the slide show to read the captions)