San Diego

A little recap for the past few days. Disneyland, as can be imagined, was a rousing success. It was such a day of perfection; the kids were in a blissful zone and as such, so were Jamie and I. There were absolutely NO LINES to speak of and the boys began to wonder why there was so much walking to get to the rides. They also became concerned a couple times that there was, in fact, no ride; just lots of walking to simply look at stuff. Can you imagine what a warped view they have of DLand? Where most children dread the lines, they never experienced one. To further rub salt in the wounds of the readers, we walked, on almost each and every ride, without regard to time of day, RIGHT TO THE VEHICLE. That’s right; we entered the ride and walked right up to the prospective carrier of death without delay. No fast pass; no need for one. To make you all feel a bit better, once we finally left, I carried Ellen out screaming for candy. She was absolutely and utterly out of control. The longest lines were at the toddler or littler kid area; Dumbo was amazingly slow. There are so few days that are geared absolutely and utterly towards the kids and this was one of them. Any ride they wanted at any time, we’d do it. We brought food in as the prospect of paying $5.00 for popcorn or $20 for a hamburger after spending THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR DOLLARS just to walk into the park was simply nauseating.

We left the Canyon of The Weird the next day (the place we camped was truly, full of absolutely The Most LA People on the Planet; the day we entered, a Sunday, we were stopped at the entrance gate trying to gain access. People from nowhere (we were so far out in the canyonlands it frightens me to think of where they appeared from) appeared behind us, honking and sighing and gesturing as they were In A Very Big Hurry and couldn’t believe the audacity of an RV entering an RV park to cause such a blight on their day. It was SO LA.

We found a beautiful San Diego County park just east of Chula Vista and saved ourselves some driving as our normal haunt in San Diego is Portrero Park, some 45 miles east of San Diego. The kids are loving the park; lots of grass and roaming and trees and pine cones to torture and pine needles to poke with and sap to rub all over their body (and then demand peanut butter (and RARE ORGANIC pb at that!) to remove it with). They have been playing for two solid days. The girls play horse/owner imaginary games and the boys play a weird merge of Star Wars and Harry Potter imaginary games.

Today I headed to Potrero to pick up some mail and in a spark of genious, decided to head over to Tecate (Mexico) to get cheap diesel (it is about 1.80/gal or .50/litre there as opposed to $3.00/gal here) and take the toll road to TJ as I figured it would be faster than the meandering SR94 in California that takes about a hour to traverse. I was right; it took only 15 minutes to drive from Tecate to TJ, but it took 45 minutes to find diesel (asking 4 seperate times) and once in TJ I ended up going BACK to Tecate after getting bad directions (and the complete and utter lack of directional signs on the freeway leading me astray). So, I spent 4 hours looking for freaking diesel, driving from Tecate to TJ, from TJ to Tecate and then back to TJ again and then waiting 45 minutes at the border to cross. I’d read in the paper about a border chase of a vehicle that had crossed at Tecate and then back the same day, running drugs and was worried I’d get hassled at the border. By the time I got there, I was so happy to simply FIND the damn border that I answered each question truthfully. The border official wondered why I’d spent the day in TJ, leaving my family in San Diego (I corrected him twice that I was in TECATE) but didn’t question the South Dakota driver’s license and California plates. I was about to tell him that the only reason I crossed the border was to save $1.20/gallon in gas fees (about $40/tank) but he waved me though. Now that’s what I call a thorough investigation!

So, tomorrow we head somewhere; we can’t pick up mail in Quartzite until Monday, so we’ll meander and wander in the desert for the weekend. Or we’ll be here. Or we’ll be at Portrero. Or who knows.