Driving to San Diego

I finally departed at 12:32pm Wednesday for my drive to San Diego. I spent too much time packing "emergency things" that I didn't even need. Rain clouds were starting to form as I left the house; I hated missing the monsoonal rains!

I should have left at least two hours earlier, because I didn't get to the ocean until just after 9pm. But maybe leaving at the time I did also helped me avoid all traffic around Tucson, Yuma and San Diego? It was a smooth, uneventful drive. I drove the entire length of I-8 as it ended in Ocean Beach (where the Original Dog Beach is), right across the San Diego River and Sea World, which was launching its 9pm closing fire works as we arrived. The scenery didn't get exciting until I reached the hills east of Yuma.

The dogs handled the drive beautifully. The drive took me nine hours as I made a few stops for the dogs so they could pee and stretch out there legs. The heat was in the triple digits across the desert, and I had the AC on high for them. Neither complained.

The one stop I made for them was in Yuma, AZ, on the Colorado River. I let them dip their paws in the river under the bridge at Riverside park, where a few people were still chilling in the water. I had their travel water bowl filled up for them as well, so that they never were thirsty.

Once I crossed into California my anticipation peaked. San Diego is only around 176 miles from Yuma, and the scenery west of El Centro becomes hilly and then mountainous as one drives over the Cleveland National Forest, a chain of rocky, bouldery geologic formations. Small ranches dotted the scenery below, and at one point near Jacumbra, once can see the border with Mexico. I had good reception of a strong NPR station out of both Calexico, CA and San Diego (The big talk today was the US-Iran nuclear agreement that critics say is more of a business plan.) Once I reached Alpine, an unincorporated town on the far east side of the San Diego metropolitan area, I only had about 40 more miles in decent traffic.

It was already dark when I made it to Dog Beach. People were still running their dogs and that's what I did, too, keeping the dogs on the sand and away from the water. The overcast made this a very dark walk and I had to be careful where I stepped. There was much kelp on the shore, but the dogs seemed more happy just getting out and running, although they stayed near me. The blue lights of Sea World reflected in the water, but it was otherwise a quiet walk along the beach. The dogs barked at a few people but seemed more content sniffing the new smells.

My first order of the evening was getting close to my first planned hike: Mount Woodson in Poway. The streets were mostly clear but getting oriented from San Diego to CA163 was a bit unnerving at first. I eventually found a dark, quiet spot in a well-shaded bank parking lot across from a McDonald's where we rested for the night for an early start in the morning.