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Caught the free shuttle to the car rental place this morning. We could've picked one up last night when we arrived but it would've been $40 or so a day but the price dropped to $13 a day if we collected it today, no clues why the huge difference but it was worth it to delay pick up til this morning.
Collection was a relatively painless operation, we'll definitely go Enterprise next time even if they are a bit more than Dollar which was the only reason Dollar got our business over Enterprise for the 6 week hire.
We set our trusty GPS for San Diego and set off, no particular reason for going there other than everyone tells us it's a great place.
We went off the reservation looking to find the coast rd vs the highway the GPS wanted us to use and passed through Carson City. In all the old westerns that's where all the gambling and w**** houses always were lol now it's just a bit run down and maybe a tad seedy looking.
The early part of the coast road had a mix of old classic California bungalows, mostly older but also some newer condos. Then we got into the area where the awesome mansions, swimming pools, tennis courts etc are all set high up in the top of the cliffs. They had zero beach access but the. The "beach" was a bit ordinary, rocky with weedy water. I guess it's true, you can't have it all lol
We passed a sign saying warning constant land movement next .8 miles. From there the road got insane for a bit, it was all over the place lol then it settled back down, very strange. A lot of the roadside in this part was very dry, looking like classic coyote territory if we were in a movie :-)
Up and over a big steel bridge & past one of the biggest ports I've ever seen. Beach after beach, some famous like Long Beach, Huntington and Laguna but most less known all with nice white sand, sparkling blue water and people enjoying the last of the warm weather. Huntington had small waves today but by the look of it a bit of a rip all the same and it has a series of oil rigs off shore. There's also a big desalination plant at Huntington.
There are oil derricks here and there; from just the one small one in an office car park to a series in an otherwise empty lot. Not far past Long Beach there's a huge refinery. We can't help but wonder why petrol is a bit more here than it was in other states given they clearly have their own oil.
After Newport Beach many of the houses and condos became more hacienda style, the Mexican influence showing through stronger the further south we went.
Resurrecting the nutjob of the day, we spotted a black guy, in his 20's wearing jeans, no shirt but he did have a tiara on lol. Alternatively it could go to the guy driving a bus covered in bible bashing stuff all over it. One of the bigger sections compares the devil to the pope lol
Shortly before Onofro Beach we pretty much had to join the highway and the view became a little more boring, back to dry scrub on one side and for the most part, the open ocean on the other. We passed the small city that is Camp Pendleton, a 70,000 man strong Marine training camp complete with fake buildings for training exercises.
In the end the 1.5 - 2 hour drive took us 5 hours and we arrived in San Diego a bit after 4pm. We tried to find a park to take a bit if a look around and maybe grab some lunch/dinner but it was impossible. We saw quite a bit from the car circling before we gave up and headed out of town.
Driving into San Diego was pretty cool, there's a church which looks more like a couple of rockets and lots of water on both sides of the wide road some of which includes a naval base opposite the airport.
Pete finally got to see some military aircraft in action, a couple of helicopters and a fighter jet were all playing around over our heads.
About five minutes out of town we found a Mexican restaurant that looked very dodgy but had great food. They even made their own churros so for desert, yum :-)
Back to LA, a quick stop for some water, crisps for Pete's late night snack, wine for me and a couple of 16gig memory cards for the new go pro and we settled in for the night.
On the news tonight there was a report about a bear being sedated and removed from a residential neighbourhood not too far from us. Salt in the wound IMO lol
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