Family Time

17-24 January 2022

Me and my sister Cathy

Exactly one month after I left Georgia, I made it to my final destination for this leg of my journey, Oceanside CA. I came here to visit my older sister, Cathy, her family, and my mom,

Me and mom

who I haven’t seen in 4 years.

They’re getting ready to move to a different house so we didn’t have time to do much sightseeing. We just mostly hung out and spent time together but I didn't mind, that's what I came here for.

I stayed at Lake O’Neill Campground on Camp Pendleton. A full hook-up site (water, electric and sewer) was only $44/night which is cheap compared to other places which were $95+. This was my first time on a Marine base and I have to admit, I was impressed. First of all, it’s huge! They have just about everything you could need and never leave the base. They even have a paintball park! Why didn’t the Air Force ever have anything like that? The campground wasn’t that large (they have 2 other campgrounds, Del Mar and San Onofre, which are on the beach), but it was pretty with the eucalyptus and peruvian pepper trees everywhere.

I wanted to stay at Del Mar Campground which is on the beach and only about 15 minutes from my sister’s house but as luck would have it, it closed for renovations in October and won’t reopen until late summer of this year.

Fitzgerald had fun watching the fat little ground squirrels that were everywhere. It tuckered him out!

I did purchase and install two lithium batteries so hopefully they will perform better than the lead acid ones. I guess we’ll find out when I leave here. I’ll be doing some extended boondocking but I can’t tell you where. That would spoil the surprise!

Cathy and I managed to get out one day and take a ride down the coast. The first stop was the Oceanside Harbor to see the sea lions. There was even a baby!

This guy was posing for us

She then took me to the "Top Gun" house near the pier. In the movie it was Kelly McGillis' home. On its original location there were two hotels built so they moved the house to a temporary location to restore it and moved it back last summer. It now sits between the two hotels. They're still working on the inside and will lease it in the future as a business. Maybe an ice cream shop!

Queen palm near the Top Gun House. I just thought it was cool looking!

Next stop was The Torrey Pines Gliderport to watch the paragliders. I would love to be able to do it but I just don't think I could. It looks fun though!

Finally, we had a sunset dinner at Poseidon. Oh my gosh it was divine!

We started out with the Chilean Sea Bass Ceviche. Yum! Then I had the shrimp and filet with asparagus and potatoes. Yum Yum! We splurged and got creme brûlée for dessert. Yum Yum Yum! They had to roll us out of there we were so full.

We watched the sun go down from our beachside table. What an amazing view!

And because you can never have too many sunsets, we went back to Oceanside Harbor the next night. There's something about a SoCal sunset in the winter. The colors are so intense.

Sea lion basking in the last few rays

While we were watching the sunset, we heard someone screaming and these two kayakers took off paddling toward another one that had tipped over. All together, 3 kayakers and harbor patrol responded. I was never able to find out what happened though. I hope everyone was okay.

That's it for this edition. Next time, I have my first roadtrip buddy!