Monday, 3/4 – Wednesday, 3/6 highlights:
- Monday was spent relaxing on the resort grounds. The featured Monday barbecue lunch turned out to be grilled burgers on the Canyon Grille patio, served with a bag of chips and a cup of water. Since there were only three other guests attending, we pulled a couple of tables together and invited them to join us. An interesting group of people: Lorraine, from Bismark South Dakota owns several time shares (including one at this property) and spends the winter months visiting them and nearby family and friends while escaping the bitter climate of her home city. She was a registered nurse before retiring many years ago, and owned a high end dress shop in Bismark for several years. Jean still works as a systems engineer for Lockheed Martin and keeps their satellites aloft and functioning. She also owns a number of time shares, including at this Welk resort, and is a regular visitor along with her boyfriend (her term) of many years, Pat, a former Vegas bar tender and rock musician who played drums and bass in a few cover bands. After eating we went to the weekly farmers market held here and bought some locally grown strawberries and lettuce along with a barbecued chicken and huge rack of ribs to have for dinner.
- Tuesday we drove up to Newport Beach to visit with Mary Beth and Jim. They rent on Balboa Island for several weeks every winter to spend some time with their west coast grandchildren – and to escape the snow back east. We rented a “duffy” – a small electric boat – and toodled around the harbor for two hours, ogling the yachts, sailboats and houses. As we ate our lunch we were joined by a gull who landed on the front deck just outside the plexiglass windscreen. He stayed pretty much there for most of our trip, once trying to eat my sandwich through the wind screen, a few times fending off a much larger gull, once or twice flying away only to come back a minute or two later. I used my Merlin app to identify him as a Hermann gull, newly arrived from Mexico and greatly outnumbered by the other gulls on the California coast. After our ride we took a short walk along the shore front to see some of the more spectacular house up close. On our drive back to Escondido it began to rain in earnest so the tacos we bought wound up being eaten right in the car.
- Wednesday was the most promising day weather-wise so we packed a lunch and headed to the Anza-Borrego desert to check out the desert bloom. It was spectacular, reputed to be a super-bloom this year, with yellows, purples, pinks and whites carpeting the desert floor. The fall rains coupled with cooler than normal temperatures forced the germination of thousands of annual seeds, some of which may have lay dormant for dozens of years. There were several varieties of evening primrose, multiple forms of verbena and desert sunflowers and even a low-growing desert lily. Beautiful and well worth the 1 1/2 hour trip. I hope to see more when we get back on the road Sunday morning.
The Ultimate Road Trip 