Driving your family from a blissed-out zen retreat to arguably the most in-your-face city in the world entails some adjustment.  Though we’ve been attempting to inject variety into our destinations and campsite types, this was an especially drastic jump.

I was somewhat surprised to discover how limited the Las Vegas RV accommodation choices were, given how tourist oriented it is.  It wasn’t lack of space as much as it was lack of varying types of spots to park.  At the low end of the scale (disregarding the Breaking Bad tumbleweed-strewn RV parks out on the fringes of town) was the Circus Circus parking lot, where they gleefully advertise RV camping Right On the Strip!  My skepticism of that setup was confirmed by a quick skim of its online reviews.  It does sound like a great place to inadvertently donate anything you leave outside to whomever may wander by (there’s no security whatsoever evidently).  And sure, who doesn’t want to brush elbows with the local color three steps and a thin door from where you and your kids are sleeping?  But not a good fit for us.

The best option would likely have been the RV park at nearby Nellis Air Force Base, but that opinion seems to have been popular as I found it booked essentially solid for several months.  That left the string of KOA and KOA-esque campgrounds on the east side of town and one of two “upscale” options just south of the Strip that promote themselves with glossy brochures and websites to match.  Still skittish from our Mission Bay “splurge” but not especially comfortable with either the location or the look of the KOAs, I opted for the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort.  New Class A motorhomes only, palm trees, sparkling pools, and “Celebrating the Las Vegas Lifestyle” as their tagline.  I had to think about that last bit.  Still do.  But neither my questions about what’s being celebrated nor the price tag dissuaded me, and it turned out to be a decent call.

First though, the drive up.  It was surprisingly enjoyable.  I hesitated slightly when looking at the two lane roads through the desert, but I needn’t have.  They were better maintained than most of what we’d heretofore dealt with, and offered gorgeous scenery and unlimited visibility.  What I realized as we turned off of the interstate was that while I’d criss-crossed the California desert multiple times in my childhood, it was almost always both as a means to an end with no stops en route and on the main roads only.  There was much I hadn’t seen!  We made a stop in the small town of Kelso, where there is a mini ghost town and a restored railroad depot.  We then drove up the grade (more Joshua Trees!) through the Mojave National Preserve, where the scenery is almost as otherworldly as what we had just left behind in Joshua Tree.  Lots of little campgrounds and dirt roads to explore too.  Who knew?

Our arrival at the LVMR was met with much fanfare.  Seriously, it was.  Heavy black and gold iron gates, an involved check-in process, and a 10-minute-or-so wait for an escort to show us to our site.  Show us to our site??  Huh, OK.  Seemed excessive, but if the “Las Vegas Lifestyle” is about anything, it’s about excess I suppose.

What we discovered is that this is not so much a campground as it’s overwintering grounds for motorhome-owning folks who reside in colder climes.  Lots of Alberta license plates.  Evidently the sites are privately owned and then, as a service to the owners when they’re not present, rented out to transient folks like us.  Some of the sites, actually most of them, were elaborately built out with outdoor kitchens, bars, cabanas, and festive rope lighting.  It took me a day to warm to the idea, but after I did, it struck me as a ridiculously pleasant way to spend your winters if your lifestyle lends itself to such a thing.  We’re not remotely there yet, but I filed it away for reference – call it a data point.

Despite our presence bringing the average age of the park’s residents down by several years, we enjoyed it, as did the kiddos.  Keeper gave the showers multiple thumbs up, and we had a hot tub and pool about a hundred yards away.

I’ve finally learned that west of the Rockies (with the exception of WA/OR west of the Cascades), if you see healthy, green grass in your RV site, you should not leave anything on that grass overnight that you don’t want to find soaked in the morning.  Sprinklers.

I had to chuckle on day two when I answered a call from a Las Vegas number I didn’t recognize and was solemnly advised that it was Las Vegas Motorhome Management and they had been informed that we had a [dramatic pause…] TENT on our site.  We had set up the Clam, as we normally do, and nowhere in the rules/guidelines were tents mentioned, so I guess this was one of those rules that Just Goes Without Saying.  I mean, what were we thinking?!?  Las Vegas Lifestyle, People!

Ok, kidding mostly… they were very courteous and I quickly and happily broke down the Clam and managed not to run afoul of the LVMR authorities for the rest of our stay.

We had plenty of activities to choose from in Vegas, but opted to focus primarily on the outdoorsy options after a drive on night one down The Strip failed to generate the fascination and enthusiasm in the kids that we were expecting.  Keeper, looking up from his phone, somewhere near the Stratosphere: “How long are we going to keep doing this?”  This is actually a good thing, as I’m of the opinion that Vegas’ outdoor recreation activities are sorely underrated.  There’s Lake Mead to the east, Red Rock Canyon to the west, snow skiing within an hour to the northwest, and a whole slew of State and National Parks within striking distance.

Having heard good things about Valley of Fire State Park, we headed up there for an afternoon of hiking immediately after swooping me from the airport at the end of my trip.  Great call.  We only had time for a fairly short hike, but it was another stunner.

The kids will now climb pretty much any rock you put in front of them, and they know their barrel cacti from their jumping cholla.

Once again, I’ll let pictures tell the story here.

 

While we were happy not to spend most of our time on The Strip, we did want to at least do an evening there, as it’s a unique part of the landscape and worth seeing.  We were curious what our kids’ take on it would be upon seeing the insides of the casinos and the sidewalk craziness.

Las Vegas’ ability to re-invent itself every decade or so has always fascinated me.  The Vegas of my childhood was a dismal place indeed – other than the whole mob thing, of which I had no awareness at all, the two overarching images I have from that time, whether fair or not:

• Casinos foggy with cigarette smoke, and old… very old actually… folks sitting immobile in front of ding-ding-dinging slot machines, puffing away and pulling the handles, glassy-eyed.
• Preposterously cheap food that was worth exactly what you paid for it. Though I wasn’t concerned about such things at the time, you couldn’t get a decent meal there.  They just didn’t exist.  I remember seemingly endless buffet tables (“$3.95 — all you can eat!”) with rows of red heat lamps, under which were plates of desiccated morsels which had probably been semi-edible at some point that week but were now only marginally distinguishable from each other.

After that came the Treasure Island / Mirage / Excalibur phase, in which there seemed to be a dedicated push to make it fun for the whole family rather than the busloads of aforementioned folks from LA.  Pirates!  Volcanoes!  Cirque du Soleil!

Then the “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” phase – the genius who came up with that marketing campaign has hopefully never needed to work again (but is anyway).  I guess Vegas is still in that phase, technically, but my impression whenever I’m in town now is that it’s more about “high end” than anything.  Before, it was gaudy and over the top, but in a tongue-in-cheek way because ultimately it knew it was cheesy.  Now, it’s still over the top, but legitimately so.  Finding cheap eats is just as difficult as finding good eats used to be.  I like it actually, though only in somewhat small doses.  But it seems that gambling, which used to be pretty much everything in Vegas, has now taken a back seat to the insane variety of other things you can see and do there, and there truly is something for everyone.

At any rate, the Las Vegas Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon happened to be taking place during our stay, so we opted to take advantage of The Strip being closed to vehicular traffic (and full of running folks, laser shows, and live bands) to introduce our kids to a stroll through Vegas’ beating heart.  Parking was brutal, but the atmosphere was even more lively than usual.

We did a loop that took us through the Bellagio, Caesar’s, Treasure Island, and The Venetian, then had dinner at a decent-bordering-on-outstanding pizza place, where we sat outside and enjoyed the mild weather and views of the new-ish giant ferris wheel.

Predictably, our kids reacted differently to the Strip’s excesses.  Woodsprite was wide-eyed and bouncy as usual.  Firebolt was enthralled, and couldn’t wait to return.

Keeper was unimpressed and at least mildly annoyed, and spent much of his walking time with his shirt pulled up over his nose in a futile attempt to block out some of the cigarette smoke, of which there really wasn’t much compared to back in the day… I think he’s glad he saw it, but doesn’t need to go back.

Our desire to take the kids to a show was dampened by our inability to do it inexpensively (without sitting through a timeshare presentation the following morning that is) and the kids’ relative lack of enthusiasm for it.  The girls just didn’t want to sit still I think, and Keeper’s fun-meter had peaked much earlier in the evening and was headed steadily southward.  So… back to our cushy RV resort, and on we go.

 

The next phase of the trip was something about which we had deliberated quite a bit.  Our initial plan had been to be en route to Florida and the Southeast, but once we resigned ourselves to returning to Maryland, several options presented themselves.  I covered most of our thought process in my Coronado post, and despite looking at some other options since then which could’ve allowed us to travel a bit longer and/or store Davista somewhere other than Southern Cal, we ultimately checked the weather forecast and decided that Seal Beach would be Davista’s overwintering site after all, and Zion, Death Valley, and Sequoia / Kings Canyon would get our patronage prior to the drive up to Grass Valley to meet the extended family for Thanksgiving.  All three of those National Parks I’ve seen before, but briefly and long ago, which makes me eager to return.  There will be no more Las Vegas Motorcoach Resorts for awhile, but that’s fine – who needs a faux-gold-plated shower anyway?

If I were to design an escape destination — not so much a Rupert Holmes thing, more of a place where you could go and it’s so different from everything that you’re used to, you’re compelled to turn inward and just pay attention… it would likely look very much like Joshua Tree.  It’s not so much quiet as it’s silent.  The scenery is otherworldly.  It’s warm and dry.  And the enormous piles of rocks are composed of a coarse gneiss that just begs you to climb them.

Here’s our short drive from LA.  The LA basin is fairly arid, so the scenery really doesn’t change too dramatically as you get into the desert proper, and only once you’re inside the National Park do you find yourself surrounded by these rock formations and suddenly wonder how it’s possible that you’ve driven to another planet.

I would imagine that most people even outside of California are familiar with the eponymous trees thanks to U2.  They’re actually a cousin to the yucca plant and grow in just about any western US high desert within a certain elevation band – the interwebs tell me 2000’ to 6000’, but in California you really don’t see them until above 3000’.  In fact they make a pretty reliable altimeter when you’re driving up a desert grade and suddenly notice them first dotting and then swarming the landscape.  Interestingly, the cover photo of The Joshua Tree was taken in Death Valley, and if you remember, has no Joshua Trees at all.  Most of Death Valley is very, very low.  Inside the album was where the photo of the band with the actual, or I should say an actual Joshua Tree lived, and they found that particular one along Highway 395 between Death Valley and the Sierras.  I read that it’s long since dead, but the spot where it used to stand is littered with memorabilia, much like Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris.

We pulled into our campsite and I believe Tacco’s first words were “uh, wow.”  But much more emphatic than that looks in print.  More like UHHHHHH — WOW!  Which was really the only appropriate response.  It’s not a place that inspires wordiness – it’s more of a “Shut up and look around.  Breathe.  Listen.  Now look around some more” type of place.

No hook ups, so we’d be relying on our generator for whatever electricity we needed/wanted, but one of my first thoughts was that I absolutely did not want to turn on a generator in this place.  It seemed sacrilegious.

After making quick work of setting up camp, the kids and I got straight to climbing; it would’ve been unthinkable not to.  Even Woodsprite couldn’t resist the pull of “ooh, let me just go a little higher,” and by the end of the afternoon we all sported patchworks of little scrapes and scratches on our arms and legs.  One of the first times I went rock climbing, my friend / youth group leader (the same one who had such a great experience with pulling his kids out of a year of school and got us thinking of doing it ourselves) informed me that they’re called “rock bites” the first time I drew a little blood.  I passed this tidbit onto the kiddos, and it seemed to take the edge off of any blood drawn, though the excitement and novelty of the climbing helped too.

Deciding on a proper supervision level was another challenge.  Clearly this was something the kids hadn’t done before, and it wouldn’t be at all difficult to maneuver into a situation that could lead to broken bones or worse.  Yet pushing their boundaries was something we wanted to encourage.  What’s a skinned knee when you can tell your friends you scaled a two hundred foot rock in the desert?  My first few climbs with the kids (particularly the girls) had me hawking them intently, but as they got more comfortable we eased off.

Our campground was a no internet / no cell phone coverage zone, which I’ve mentioned tends to add a bit of tension to the kids’ lives, particularly Keeper’s, but what he found on the second day was that if he climbed all the way to the top of the ridge behind our site, he could see all the way out to (and well past) the town of Twenty-Nine Palms, and was rewarded with two or three bars of 4G.  Needless to say he went climbing up there as much as he could after that.  We weren’t about to discourage rock climbing, especially in a place like this, but something about scaling a mountain to get a cellular signal and internet seemed off to me.

I found Joshua Tree to be a great place to think.  The silence is so total, it almost registers as loud background noise.  You perceive whatever tinnitus you’ve developed over the years as something bearing down on you, and only when it’s broken by the faint chirp of a bird two miles away or a kid pleading “but mommmm” inside a tent on the most distant corner of the campground do you realize how little sound there actually was previously.

Something Keeper said on our second morning got me meandering down a somewhat interesting mental path from my perch on the boulder-strewn ridgeline I’d climbed while the rest were going about their morning routines.  He asked when we were leaving Joshua Tree for Las Vegas tomorrow and I told him I wasn’t sure – whenever was comfortable.  He told me he preferred right now.

I had to suppress my immediate frustration and walk outside to avoid saying something.  This is a response I find I’ve had a good bit in the last few months – something about going through significant trouble to attempt to create meaningful experiences for your kids only to have them tell you essentially “this sucks.”  Of course as any parent will tell you, “this sucks” can change to “this is the best day of my life” within 15 minutes, and even if it doesn’t, any individual “this sucks” means exceedingly little in the grand scheme.

But I’ve been really affected by Joshua Tree – it’s getting into my soul in a way similar to how the Redwoods did, and I wanted my kids to open themselves to it too.  Realizing something, I paused and asked him whether it was about the lack of internet.  “Yes.”

Hm.

I’m digging through my memories for things I “couldn’t live without” in my childhood, things that I would viscerally miss while on camping trips.  TV would be the closest parallel, I suppose, but that wasn’t anywhere near what my kids feel about being off line today.  I’m trying to decide if it concerns me, and I think it does.

It might even fall somewhere on that spectrum of dependency that has addiction as an end point.  This is not something on which I can speak intelligently, as I’ve been fortunate not to have dealt with addiction significantly, either first or second hand.  But it is something I’ve devoted thought to, as I think just about anyone has things in their life that fall somewhere on that continuum, and I’m certainly no exception.  There are habits/routines I take comfort in – nothing that I physically couldn’t do without (though a morning without coffee turns into a grumpy, headachy afternoon pretty reliably), but certainly things that I don’t want to give up.  Are these dependencies?  Possibly.

What I’m starting to notice on this trip, likely as a by-product of it, is that we’re all clinging more tightly to our dependencies.  Something about the uncertainty and unfamiliarity of the lifestyle is leading us to crawl back toward familiarity and comfort.  There is no real home base to retreat to and reset, just constant motion.  I had hoped, during the “imagining the trip” phase, that it would take the opposite tack – that we would shake loose of pretty much everything habitual and try on some new stuff.  Early morning exercise.  Board games instead of screens.  Voracious reading.  New hairstyles.  Long solo bike rides.  Introducing ourselves to strangers.  Healthy smoothies for breakfast.

It might still go that direction of course, but not without effort.  It won’t “go there,” we’ll have to lead it there.  I was hoping to avoid the effort part.  Maybe that’s where my kids get it?

Tacco had an interesting response to Joshua Tree on her first day, and I wouldn’t dream of trying to flesh it out as it was deeply personal, and I’m sure she’ll cover it when she writes.  I can only say that it was negative – as if there was a negative energy around or something very bad happening.  Having experienced exactly the opposite vibe and wanting to bring her with me, I tried to suggest that maybe it was just “one of those bad days,” similar to my San Elijo – Mission Bay downs, and I was quickly (and rightfully) fired the “I KNOW you’re not attempting to tell me how I feel, right?…” warning shot and I went to go climb another rock.  Fortunately by the next day it had passed.

 

 

Keeper tried another “sleep out in the hammock” night, but the setup was significantly more challenging as we had no trees to tie to, so jury-rigged a system using webbing wrapped around rocks.  It worked, but he came in at 2AM-ish, having not gotten much sleep due to his side being pressed against a boulder.

We drove into the main area of the National Park the following morning, after a stop at the Ranger Station to pick up Junior Ranger materials and take in a lecture by one of the rangers about Search and Rescue.

Our hike was fairly short, but spectacular.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking here.  The kids absolutely loved it.

 

On our second and last night, all three kids decided they would like to sleep outside, though Keeper abandoned the hammock idea and attempted to set up a bug net-protected bivouac of sorts on a flat area in the rocks above our site. Evidently the thought of seeing all those stars overrode any concerns they had about critters or discomfort.  It turns out, however, that a concern about critters morphs into something entirely more pressing when it becomes an actual critter sighting, and in their cases, it can’t be overridden.  Just as they were heading toward their sleeping bags, I spotted a tarantula ambling around in the general area, looking for food and companionship likely.  I suppose I could’ve ignored him and hoped the kids didn’t notice, but a quick mental calculation led me to deem that option 1) cruel and 2) likely to lead to multiple knocks in the middle of the night from kids wanting back into their beds because they were cold/scared/uncomfortable/thirsty/etc.  So I shined the light on him with a “heeeey, check that out!”  Keeper, with his self-declared arachnophobia, had seen all he needed to, and made a beeline back to his bunk, accompanied by a quick but emphatic “NOPE!”  The girls followed a bit more hesitatingly, although they watched our tarantula friend do his thing with me, just out of curiosity.  Mostly he just walked around in a circle, then left.

It was a peaceful night.

Tomorrow we head up to Las Vegas and an RV park that’s pretty much the polar opposite of this campground.  I wish we could stay longer, but I have a trip to fly.  Joshua Tree has been intense, and provoked strong reactions in all of us.  I have a feeling it will age well in our memories.

There will be absolutely nothing negative in this post.  Coronado, for lack of a better verb, rocked.

I realized at some point that I have swum in the Pacific Ocean almost every day for a month.  I have a suntan, and not from “laying out.”  I feel great.  More than great.

Our stay in Coronado was something I had looked forward to for a long time – the Coronado Beach Cottages are situated on Naval Air Station North Island’s beachfront, right next to the Navy Lodge, which, if you disregard the fence and security measures which separate the base from the rest of Coronado, is itself technically next to the iconic Hotel Del Coronado (the “Hotel Del”), where people spend thousands of dollars a night to loll about in a beachy haze.  It is a gorgeous stretch of sand and water, and reservations for the Beach Cottages fill up almost immediately, and for good reason.  It far exceeded my already high expectations.

Quick aerial view for those not familiar with San Diego.  Coronado, though island-like and in the middle of San Diego Bay, is not technically an island as it’s connected by a very thin strip of land from a point near the border with Mexico.  Once upon a time late 1800s it was more or less just a ritzy resort area centered on the Hotel Del, and later (WWI time frame) Naval Air Station North Island, then known as Naval Air Station San Diego.  But after the bridge was built, the development followed quickly, resulting in a charming beach community that manages to maintain its own character amidst San Diego’s sprawl.

My instinct to book a cottage at the end of October turned out to have been correct, though fortuitously so.  We managed to hit a heat wave that brought over 100-degree temperatures to San Diego’s beaches.  That may sound like a common thing for Southern California, and indeed it is if you happen to be inland, but on the actual beach with water temps in the high-60s at most, air temperatures over 100 are not only quite rare, but also entirely palatable due to the cool water at your doorstep and the cool evenings enabled by the near-zero humidity.  Even more palatable when you’re staying in an air-conditioned cottage right on the sand.

It’s difficult to describe the feeling of SPACE we felt when we first walked in.  It was about 1000 ft² maximum, but Tacco and I had our own bedroom with a door we could close, there was a full sized bathroom and shower, a dishwasher (are you kidding me?) and a washer/dryer that we could use anytime we wanted, without feeding it quarters.  We had a living room and full kitchen.  Our back porch with the outside shower sported an unobstructed view of the sand and the ocean, as well as Point Loma on our West side and the Hotel Del, the last of California’s coastline, and the coastal mountains of Mexico in the distance on our South and East side.

We wasted no time commencing beach ops.  Having spent the last few weeks on Southern California beaches, we knew exactly what to do.  The beach itself turned out to be very similar to Carpinteria in its shallow sandiness (i.e. kid friendliness).  And the surf was, for our purposes, pretty much perfect.  Steep, easy to catch waves that broke far enough out to make them rideable, and just big enough to be sporty but not big enough to be especially dangerous.  I discovered, to my great pleasure, that Keeper’s San Elijo frustration had been quickly forgotten, and we spent hours catching waves together, with Woodsprite frolicking happily in the shallower water.

Operating without a wallet and identification on a military base required some extra planning, but we managed it without too much difficulty, and I was able to replace my military ID almost immediately.

My parents flew down and joined us on day 2, which was another coup.  They flew into Long Beach so that they could take advantage of space available flying on JetBlue, rented a car, and then met us at the USS Midway museum in downtown San Diego, where we spent a few hours exploring and introducing the kids to life on an aircraft carrier.

I say “introducing the kids” but actually… shamefully, or proudly, I haven’t decided which yet, I realized that despite 23 years serving as a naval aviator, my first step onto the Midway was my first step onto an aircraft carrier.  Part of my decision to fly P-3s rather than carrier-based aircraft was what I perceived at the time to be a quality of life choice – I wanted no part of “The Boat” as we later put it.  “The Boat” was our blanket term in the P-3 community for basically anything grey and floating.

Though my Naval career far exceeded what I could’ve imagined on just about every axis when I first joined, I have fired up the what-if machine at times and tried to picture what my life would’ve looked like had I flown the pointy-nosed jets off of the carriers.  Touring the Midway made me wish there was a way to have checked that box without giving up everything else I was able to do.  Which there wasn’t of course, but the tour made for a fun and somewhat nostalgic afternoon.

The rest of our stay in Coronado was basically like a “greatest hits” of the beach days over the last month.  Keeper and I did a swim and body surf session that spanned the sunset.  We had likely our best family dining out experience yet at Stone Brewery’s Liberty Station restaurant (Liberty Station is the old Marine Corps Recruit Depot, which has been re-purposed from a Boot Camp site to a ridiculously charming food-shop-residential area).  We celebrated Tacco’s birthday.  And we relaxed.  Lots of relaxing.

 

 

One consequence of our morphing plans brought on by our house’s failure to sell was the prospect of another month in the West.  Originally San Diego was to be the point at which we turned the corner and headed back to the East, with the plan being to reach the Florida Keys, then park Davista for the remainder of the Winter at a military base somewhere in Florida.  Our leisurely stay in Coronado gave us plenty of time to game out several other options.  We landed on a plan that would allow us to spend Thanksgiving in Grass Valley (Sierra Nevada foothills) with my brother-in-law’s parents and the extended family on my side.  Basically our intention now is to head back to Southern California and take advantage of a heavily discounted 3-day pass for military folks at Disneyland, as well as to spend a bit more time visiting with friends there.  I’ll also fly another work trip out of Long Beach, which is a relatively easy commute. We’ll then venture out into the desert and see Joshua Tree, Las Vegas, possibly Zion National Park (weather permitting), and maybe Death Valley prior to coming back across the mountains in California.  Though I would very much like to drive up Route 395 along the dramatic east side of the Sierras, many of the higher passes are already closed, and even the lower ones, of which we would have to cross several, are at 8000’ plus and getting early season snow.  As comfortable as I’m getting with Davista, snowy roads aren’t something I’m ready to subject myself or my family to.

I think I mentioned at some point feeling a mixed sense of relief about flying back to our house in Maryland for the Winter.  I no longer have that – I would very much like to keep doing what we’re doing and not break it up.  We’ve been looking for ways to manage staying on the road, but it has become obvious that we really don’t have a viable choice, and will need to leave Davista on the West Coast and at least base out of our Annapolis house for a few months.  Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station looks like an excellent Winter home for Davista though.  It’s right near Long Beach airport, so I could potentially bid a layover or two and check on her.

The kids are still looking forward to heading back to Maryland, but they seem to be getting more comfortable with our lifestyle as well.  Firebolt in particular seems to be getting over her “this just doesn’t feel right” sentiment – I have an inkling that she’ll be the first of the three to want to return to the traveling life after a couple months.

The bottom line is that we’re in a good space, no, a great space.  Even with all the uncertainty.  Basically Coronado was a fitting book end to the beach phase of our journey.  Any frustrations I was still tangling with melted away.  If we could stay, I would, but of course that’s not what this is all about!

There’s a lesson to be learned from our stay at Mission Bay, I know there is.  I’ve had to tweak this post repeatedly, though, as I kept going in unwanted directions.  It was a weird stay.

First of all, how we ended up there.  Weekends are tricky and require reservations – this we’ve now known for a while.  I had booked the Coronado Beach Cottages on Naval Air Station North Island months ahead of time for next week, and considered this a major coup.  I hadn’t, however, been able to find state parks or military sites remotely in the area for the weekend prior.  The private campgrounds seem to be always the last to get reserved, and I was able to find a couple on Mission Bay.  My impression of Mission Bay before staying there was that it’s kind of a water sports and BBQing-on-the-beach mecca.  Vacationing families from out of town, wake boarders, bouncing beach balls, etc.  Sea World is there, there are lots of little beaches and passages, and the water is protected and calm.  Here’s how it looks from the air.

Campland was the most expensive of the RV campgrounds there, so I opted for the splurge, reasoning that since I would be gone part of the time on my work trip, why not ensure Tacco and the kids were in the best place possible?

When we pulled up to the gate and checked in, the woman behind the counter was over-the-top enthusiastic, describing all the amenities, assuring us that after this visit we’d become regulars, and topping it off with “welcome to paradise!”  Paradise!  Wow!

So in we drive, eyes wide.

It wasn’t paradise, at least at first blush.

Now I’m not going to claim it was the opposite, it certainly wasn’t.  Our (quite pricey) spot, however, was a little section of parking lot with a small patch of dirt next to it and bordered by a chain link fence.  OK, not a problem, we thought, it must be all about the amenities.  Or the clientele.  And at least there was no one parked next to us.

It wasn’t the amenities. It wasn’t the clientele.

We walked down to the ersatz beachfront – it was an actual beach, but the sand had clearly been trucked in and dumped on top of the muddy shore to make it so — past a smattering of RVs that had seen better days and appeared to have been parked for quite some time.  It captured neither the kids’ nor my imagination, so after a couple minutes we walked right back.

Essentially it was this, and I’ll skip to the summary rather than dragging out the play-by-play – my impression is that this is an RV park built around a bar.  The bar was mostly outdoors and held the position of honor in the center of the park, and seemed to get most of the park’s activity.  Unfortunately, depending on how you look at it I suppose, the activity was lazy day drinking.  And night drinking.  Lots of beer and cocktails.  All while the few kids ran around on the grass field between the bar and the water or rode their bikes around while wearing rubber-mohawk-spiked helmets.  There was a park-wide PA system that would occasionally exhort us all to get out there for happy hour with Brandi, or Crystal, or whichever bartendress had the serve-booze-to-the-RVers watch.

Is that an overly negative picture I’ve painted?  Have we become uptight?  I wouldn’t have thought so, but my description makes me wonder.  People were undoubtedly enjoying themselves.  And I don’t intend to imply that everyone there was loud and drunk – I certainly wouldn’t call it raucous.  Yet when I joined Tacco and the kids during my layover after taking the red-eye back to Boston and then operating the flight back to San Diego, she was a bit bleary-eyed from the loud country music and ‘80s hair bands that had dueled late into the night and kept her awake.  She had to explain to the kids that it wasn’t cool to keep your neighbors up with your music (unless you’re in college, where it’s encouraged).

I guess it just wasn’t our place.  There’s nothing especially wrong with it objectively.  I’m not specifically against any of the elements I described in themselves, and I could imagine circumstances under which someone looking for a place to party lazily for a weekend with friends and like-minded RVers would find it paradise.  ish.  There’s a marina with water toys for rent.  There’s a decent playground.  There are at least two pools, though I never saw anyone swimming.  There’s an arcade, in which our kids had an excellent time killing an hour or so, and did an especially good job cooperating with each other (Tacco will cover that story I think).  And the San Diego sun.  It’s just… it didn’t feel like a “splurge.”

I took one picture there, and one only.  It’s Woodsprite “playing” alone by filling a few of her beach/sand toys with dirt.  Dirt.  My thought when I took it was “Has it come to this?  This is what I’m providing for our kids to amuse themselves?”  That’s overblown I know, but remember I was just coming off San Elijo’s wild ride of emotions.  I knew we could do better.

So here’s a lesson learned.  I’ve realized upon analysis of this particular stay that I’m far more critical of places that I leave the family when I have to depart for work, even if I’m departing for a short time.  Seems obvious when I read what I just wrote, but it’s new to me, revelation-wise.  Questionable places we can deal with, but I’d like to be with them when we do so.  The corollary here is that the private RV parks (see my completely unscientific breakdown of the various types here) have their own widely varying character when compared to the state or national parks, and a bit of in-depth research is advisable, particularly if I’ll be leaving the family there.

Let me take a turn toward the positive – I did make an attempt to create a few good memories there by renting a Wave Runner for bit while I was with the family during my layover.  It could only carry 3 people at a time, but it’s hard not to sport a smile when zipping over the water or doing tight 360s.  And the kids loved it!  Me too.  I’ve got a long history with personal watercraft, though I’ve managed to avoid owning one.  I got to go out with each kid individually and each combination of two kids, as well as letting Keeper drive it some.  Lots of hootin’ and hollerin’ and “do it again!”  It was a blast for all involved.  Almost, that is.  Unfortunately my victory was dampened by the last run, in which I had Tacco and Woodsprite aboard.  Though 90% of the watery circuit was unbridled joy, I managed to take my very last turn too tightly combined with hitting a swell at exactly the wrong spot, and tweaked Tacco’s already soreness-prone neck.  My victory took on an asterisk.  I hate to see my wife in pain.

Equally tricky to characterize was our decision to grab fish tacos in Pacific Beach rather than stay at the RV park and BBQ.  Ridiculously tasty fish tacos are one of San Diego’s culinary fortés – generally there are several varieties available, from shark to albacore to scallop to wahoo and everything in between, all completely fresh.  Tacco and I had both had memorable fish taco experiences in PB back in the day, so we figured we’d create a new one with the kids.  We jumped in the car and made the short drive.

In our (lengthy?) absence, however, something had changed in PB.  Possibly it’s we who changed, but we did not expect to see Spring Break in October.  I had remembered semi-quaint open air taco bars that tempted you to linger over a pitcher of beer and tacos for hours while watching the sun set over the ocean.  Was I thinking of somewhere else?  Maybe I was just much younger then.  This was the opposite of quaint, or even semi-quaint, with every restaurant and bar (none of which looked familiar) packed standing room only with dolled-up 20-somethings on the prowl or stumbling into the boardwalk.  The music was booming and Spring Break-y as well.  Despite our brutally long search for a parking spot and several-block hike to the beachfront, we realized fairly quickly that this was no place for a family and we punted.  Another lesson learned, though this one I’m not sure we could have foreseen.  We did manage to persevere and find some good off-beach tacos on the way back to the RV though.

Icing on the cake to follow… After working the redeye flight back to Boston that night (post tacos) and turning right back around onto the next flight back to San Diego, we tidied up camp and bolted.  I was tired to say the least, having spent most of the last 12 hours on an airplane, and Tacco was reasonably DONE with Campland.  We had arranged an appointment to have Davista’s roof fixed after the Carpinteria Captain Crunch incident, and had to drive 45 minutes to the north to drop it off before packing ourselves and everything we needed for the upcoming week into the minivan I’d rented to get me back from the airport and assist with the gear shuffle.  It was there that I noticed that my wallet wasn’t in any of the two or three places I normally keep it.  Not to worry, I thought, it’ll turn up shortly.

It did not turn up.

Losing one’s (full – driver’s license, military ID, pilot license, credit cards, cash…) wallet is a massive pain under the best of circumstances; these were far from the best of circumstances.  All I can advise, with the utmost urgency, is that if you ever decide to take a trip like this, please, please do not lose your wallet.

Hours of agonizing, phone calls, and step-retracing led me to the 95% conclusion that I had left it in the campsite when we departed, though no one had turned in a lost wallet at Campland.  We returned to the campsite once we had checked in at Coronado and found another RV parked there, which was odd given that there were so many vacant spots, but at least I had someone to ask if they’d seen the wallet.  No one appeared home in the RV, so I left a note on their door with my phone number explaining what had happened and asking that they please call / text if they had any information.  And that was that, nothing heard.

This was my stupid mistake, I know this and I take full responsibility.  But!  But… I can’t help but think that if someone left such a note on my door, I would at the very least send a text saying “sorry, didn’t find anything.  Best of luck.”   I can’t imagine why they would’ve made no attempt to communicate at all.  Unless…

Argh, never mind.  Let’s go to Coronado, I heard it’s AMAZING there.

Oh man San Elijo, what a roller coaster you were.

Somehow I grew up about 65 miles away from San Elijo State Beach (pronounced “San E-LAY-ho” by two separate locals, so I guess that’s right?) and I never knew it existed until I was deep into the search for RV campgrounds in Southern Cal a few months ago.  It’s in Encinitas (actually Cardiff by the Sea), which is in the northern part of San Diego county, and has a popular campground which stretches about a mile along the coastal bluff, with multiple stairways down to the ocean.  There’s a surf school on site, which should tell you a bit about how the surf conditions generally are there.

This is another stay I had been looking forward to ever since I had booked it back in June or so.  I figured that if I hadn’t taken a surf lesson yet, this would be the place, and I envisioned bonfires on the beach and happy kids (mine) playing with other happy kids in the sand.

We pulled into Spot 1 (Spot 1!) after a short drive down from Crystal Cove and found ourselves right next to the general store, the entirely decent taco shop, the bathrooms/showers, the steps to the beach, and yes, the even the surf school.  BUT… no hookups, so no power or water.  And it was dusty / dirty rather than sandy.  That dust gets everywhere.  And the beach, while easily accessible, is the kind that is a bit muddy at low tide and disappears entirely at high tide.  A shallow reef extends out a few hundred yards, and is pretty much exposed at low tide.  There would be no bonfires.

But Spot 1!  And San Elijo!  I was excited.  Cautiously.

Keeper tends to be the arbiter of campsite taste.  He’s the one who will quickly assess the surroundings and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down.  His criteria are different than mine or Tacco’s, in fact his favorite so far was Pismo Beach and I’m still not sure why.  Cell coverage and wi-fi are important, as is electricity.  Good showers are a must, and by “good” he means, as far as I can tell and in descending order of importance: 1) No spiders 2) No ants 3) No other vermin 4) Reasonably clean 5) Not coin or token operated 6) Hot water 7) A strong spray pattern.  As he surveyed Spot 1, he seemed to be cautiously optimistic as well.  A good start — perhaps.

Then we went down to the beach with our Boogie Boards.  It was near low tide, and Keeper didn’t like that reef one bit.  He did have a point.  It was rocky and fairly uneven, and difficult to tell what you were about to step on.  Further out it was mostly covered by long sea grass, making it even more tricky to know if you were stepping on something dangerous or unsavory.  More importantly for him, though, the waves we wanted to ride swept us across the reef at an average depth of about a foot, and if you’ll recall, Keeper’s big hurdle to body boarding was his remembering being tossed over the front of his board a few times, resulting in his head getting ground into the sand.  Though I attempted to soothe his fears of getting a face full of seaweedy rock by noting how gentle the waves were once they got on top of the reef, he wasn’t having it, and insisted we head down the beach to where it appeared to be more sandy.

Not a bad plan at all, at least in theory.  In practice we bumped up against the fact that Keeper never really learned to catch waves by paddling with them, instead he would push off the bottom and sort of jump partially onto the board as it caught the whitewash.  It works in very specific conditions, but isn’t really transferable onto others.  So he struggled.  A lot.  At some point after getting rolled over by several waves and not being able to stay on his board, he loudly told me he was DONE, JUST DONE!  I tried to help him get back to shore, which he was also struggling with, by explaining that getting on his board and paddling was the easiest way to go, but that wasn’t something he’d learned to do, and trying to swim and drag the board behind him wasn’t working either.  Complicating things further, I realized at this point that we were stuck in what appeared to be a mild rip current, and were getting pulled out uncomfortably close to the lineup of surfers & much larger waves, and were well past the point at which we could touch the bottom.

After some struggle, I was able to help him get in finally, but he emphatically told me that he was done with Boogie Boarding, the beach, this trip, everything.  And then he went to take a shower and found that every single one of the showers failed 6 of his 7 shower tests.  He proclaimed this the worst shower yet and a crappy site and retired to his pre-adolescent cave to brood.  So much for bonding over Boogie Boarding…  all that progress lost.

Here’s something I realized with Keeper today, though, and it goes deeper than a frustrating day in the ocean.  He sat up in the front seat with me for part of the drive down from Crystal Cove, and happened to receive a call from one of his good friends from Maryland, which he then followed by a call to his other good friend back there.  He was thrilled to talk to them.  I was fortunate enough to hear his end of the conversation and get some unfiltered insight into how he’s doing with this whole endeavor.  He was surprisingly balanced in his assessment, but the one thing that stuck out is that he misses people.  He’s an introvert, but he was very clear that what is eating at him primarily is that he hasn’t been around a kid his age since he can remember.  And while my first instinct was to find counter-examples to point out to him after he was off the phone, I quickly realized he’s right, he hasn’t.  There were a couple hours at the football tailgater with the twin daughters of a school friend who are a year older and whom he’d just met, but as far as really hanging out with anyone who wouldn’t be gone in an hour or two, he hasn’t done that since our friends in West Yellowstone, back in August.  It’s wearing on him.  Likely Firebolt and Woodsprite too.  Which means it’s wearing on me.  Not the missing people part, but the “how does this affect our kids?” part.

I don’t have a good solution to that one.  I had envisioned meeting people + kids on the road who were doing similar things, or at least were somewhat like-minded.  That has happened exactly zero times so far.  Looking at the whole with some experience now, I’m not sure why I thought it would have, and it seems like another oversight.  Though this one I don’t know how to fix.

There have been days, and so far we’ve all had them (except probably Woodsprite), where things just don’t seem to be clicking, and the nature of our situation amplifies the “bad day” vibe.  And as we’ve both mentioned, being so close to each other – all the time — contributes to our occasional off moods’ being infectious.  Also, it’s difficult to see from inside, but I would guess that being so far out of our normal comfort zone, with very little real routine or familiarity to fall back upon, intensifies the wild swings.  It doesn’t really make sense.  Logically I could explain to you at any given moment how fortunate we are to be doing this and what an amazing, singular experience it is, but that doesn’t make the flailing, when it happens, any less acute.

That’s where I was on Day 1 of San Elijo.  What on Earth are we doing, we’re wandering aimlessly, we can’t afford this, we don’t know where we’re going to live, we’re tainting our impressionable kids’ childhood, and off into the stratosphere…  Roller coaster.

That’s a strange mental place to be when you look out your window and see the below view, which should remind you to pull back and stop the damn thinking.  And to a certain extent, it did.

The flip side of wild swinging is that it can, and does, change on a dime.  I made a concerted effort to turn a corner on the day with a leap of faith and signed Tacco and I up for the next day’s surf lesson, even though it was pricey, this beach was less nice than the 3 we’d just visited, I didn’t feel like it, etc etc.   And the girls and I took a short night walk on the beach with the black light to see which sea creatures glow.  Turns out sand crab antennae are pretty cool looking.

Day 2 revealed perfect waves and a postcard view from Spot 1 after the best “sleeping to the sound of crashing surf” night yet.

I took a short bike ride into town and found a supermarket with 3 different kinds of fresh poke, rows of fresh fish, a wall of craft beer, and something called “Cardiff Crack,” which I guess is their take on marinated tri-tip that has gained some fame well outside of Southern Cal.  I could feel the optimism rising until we, and by we I mean 90% Tacco / 10% me, had to wrestle the kids through their homeschooling tasks.  Firebolt was the one digging in her heels the most this time, and as our surf lesson time approached (and the tide went back out, killing the beautiful sets of waves, and the clouds rolled in) we finally threw up our hands and told them we’d finish tomorrow.  Up… and down.

And then the surf lesson…  my leap of faith in beating back the negativity and booking it paid off.  It was one of the things I had identified as a goal for our trip back before we started.  One would think that someone who grew up in Southern California and spent a good bit of his summer time on the beach would’ve learned to surf by osmosis.  Not so.  I have plenty of time on body boards and playing in waves in general and am completely comfortable there, but surfing is something you need to be deliberate about, and I never was.  We put the kids down on the beach to play and headed up to get our wetsuits and longboards.

The first thing I discovered about surfing was that I needed this lesson.  I’d messed around on a board before and assumed it couldn’t be too hard to figure out, but not really gotten close to getting up.  Within 15 minutes I realized I had been doing it wrong every other time I’d tried, and probably wouldn’t have gotten there by myself.  We were in tiny waves – just the remains of what was breaking further out (and even those had diminished from earlier in the morning) – but that turned out to be a good thing for learning.  I actually found it pretty easy to get up once I was told how to do it, and caught many waves.  We weren’t really moving fast enough to do much maneuvering, but… dragon slain!

Tacco and I went to bed that night thoroughly exhausted and happy to have taken that leap.

Our San Elijo time was short and only semi-sweet, but valuable in hindsight.  Next up is San Diego and the end of the California beach phase of our trip.  I have a trip to fly over the weekend, but fortunately I was able to snag a trip that brings me back to San Diego for a 24 hour layover, so despite the cross-country commute, the disruption should be minimized.  It strikes me, as it has many times before, that I’m insanely fortunate to have a profession that affords me the flexibility and opportunity to do this sort of trip while continuing to work.  Roller coaster, yes… but I do like roller coasters, even if the twisty ones leave me reeling.

Kidding, morale is just fine.

For the most part at least.  I’ve previously mentioned our higher highs and lower lows brought on by our focused living situation.  There’s much more there to unpack, but the broad lines are that things tend to get amplified when living in a moving fishbowl.  None of that got any better or worse in Crystal Cove, though, it’s just there, and will continue to be I’m sure.

Crystal Cove holds yet another sweet spot in my childhood and adolescence.  It sits right at the southern edge of Newport Beach on the border with Laguna Beach in Orange County (back then it wasn’t “The OC”).  My parents “found” it when searching for a semi-secluded beach to escape to back in the early ‘80s, and would take us on the somewhat longish drive down there when we wanted to have a more special beach day.  Back then it was completely undeveloped, and probably not even a state park.  Newport Beach just sort of ended and there was a stretch of about 5-10 miles of fifty foot cliffs to the ocean on the beach side, and desert-y hills on the land side.  You’d park in a dirt parking lot on top of the cliffs and hike down to scout out your spot, beach stuff in tow.  More often than not you’d only see a few other people there, and the beach has both an extensive complex of tide pools and some sandy, breaking-wave areas.  The only two nods to development were a tiny roadside eatery called the Crystal Cove Shake Shack, which specialized in date shakes – really good ones – and a tiny little area called the Crystal Cove Beach Cottages, which were, and still are, well-preserved beachfront mini-houses from the ‘20s.  They’re still available to rent, but they book out immediately a year in advance.

Today it’s different, of course.  Though it’s not 100% developed, what used to be the desert-y hills is now Newport Coast, with a few posh hotels, lots of upscale view homes, and an equally swanky strip mall with a Trader Joe’s, several restaurants, and boutique shopping.  The Crystal Cove Shake Shack was bought by Ruby’s, which is a ‘50s-style (but ‘80s vintage) diner chain in SoCal known for having their restaurants out at the end of various piers.  Crystal Cove proper is a state park, with several different fee areas filling in the blanks between the developed areas, and fortunately for us, now including a campground.

It was a relatively short drive from Malibu, punctuated by some teeth-gritting brought on by maneuvering Davista-Toad through the busy LA freeways.  The kids and Tacco were busy with homeschooling, so were mercifully unaware of my traffic induced stress level.  An uncharacteristically surly park ranger nearly read me the riot act when I pulled into what was evidently the wrong Crystal Cove State Park parking lot (the signage leaves a bit to be desired).  “Why are you here? This isn’t right.  Oh great, look, now you’re blocking everyone else” aren’t what you normally expect to hear from a uniformed public servant when a “the lot you want is just 2 miles down the road, just turn around right there in the parking lot!” will do just fine.  But everyone managed.  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and speculate that it’s almost as stressful to see a beast like us pull up to your parking lot booth, filling up the road’s entire width and threatening to ruin your day, as it is to be at the controls of such a beast.

The campground wasn’t Carpinteria close to the beach, nor was it Malibu classy, but it was new, had hookups, plenty of space, and gorgeous sunsets.  We only had two days there (technically only one full day), so we got right to beach ops.

Keeper grabbed the Boogie Board and the girls grabbed the sand toys (Firebolt her Kindle), and off we went.  The surf had been growing steadily since Carpinteria, a function both of the various beach orientations and the offshore conditions.  We were able to get out and catch a few waves, but these were a bit more varsity than what had come before, and more suited to actual surfing.  Playing around in the waves board-free ended up being more the preferred activity.

It feels a little shameful to admit how much of a relief having a Trader Joe’s a mile away was.  We spent the first two months or so of our trip planning meals and associated grocery shopping meticulously, often with few easy options.  Nice to suddenly be able to pop in, grab whatever meals+goodies they had to offer, and then do it again the next day.  On top of that, they had a Settebello nearby, which is an authentic Neapolitan pizza place that I’m a big fan of.  Absolutely nothing wrong with eating pizza out now and then!

Day 2 afforded us the opportunity for a short morning bike ride, though Keeper wasn’t up for hitting the trails in earnest (and to be fair, there was a good bit of vertical – it would not have qualified as leisurely).  I noticed that the surf was now up a bit from the day prior, and wondered how it would affect our day’s post-homeschool activities.  As I write that I suddenly have a moment where I appreciate our good fortune to be able to be in a position to be concerned about how the surf will affect our afternoon on a Tuesday in mid-October.  Higher highs indeed.

We did have an interesting experience in today’s surf however.  Actually two interesting experiences in rapid succession.  At one point before the still growing waves had gotten too crazy, Tacco, Keeper, Woodsprite (with life jacket) and I got in to play a bit.  We were able to stay at a point at which we could still touch the bottom and most of the waves were breaking on the shore side of us, so “playing” consisted for the most part of swim/jumping over the top of the waves just before they broke, which Woodsprite absolutely loved.  I had already taught Keeper to go underneath waves which had already broken or were threatening to break on top of him, so I wasn’t concerned about his abilities in the water.  So far so good, but as often happens, a particularly large set came in, forcing me to go a bit further out so as to keep the wave from breaking on our heads.  Not a huge deal solo, but I was holding onto a lifejacket-supported Woodsprite, and hadn’t fully thought through the consequences of having to go underneath a wave while attempting to hang onto her.  That suddenly seemed like something I REALLY did not want to do, and the alternative (getting pounded by the wave, or worse still, sucked backwards and over the falls, and trying to hang onto her in the associated washing machine) seemed much worse.  As we swam further out, past where I could touch, I had the familiar “we’re not in extremis, but I can see it from here” feeling, accompanied by a surge of fight-or-flight instinct.  We went over the top of the first, and I could see at least two more building.  Sets generally last only about 3-6 waves as a rule, but this is the ocean – rule compliance is sketchy at best.  It could almost as easily just continue to get bigger, with rip currents thrown in for fun.

Woodsprite, of course, had no idea how dodgy things were getting and I didn’t want her to, so I explained to her in my calmest, “isn’t this fun?” voice that we might have to go underneath a wave, and that if we did that I’d ask her to hold her breath and hang onto me tightly while I pulled her down with me for a few seconds.  “Just like in the pool” (?? — We’ve never done anything remotely like that in the pool, and I doubted my ability to pull her too far down with a life vest on)

As luck would have it, the ocean decided to follow rules this time, and the set lasted about 4 waves, all of which we were able to get over the top of before they broke, and seeing a break in the action, I told Woodsprite we were going to swim in as fast as we could, which we did.  Disaster averted!  Sorta…

What happened next is strange.  I compare it to the phenomenon of pilots and UFOs.  There’s that old oft-repeated scene of the pilots in the cockpit seeing a flying saucer complete with green men and antennae darting by, and one looks to the other and asks “did you just see something?”  “Nnnnnope!”  And there’s a touch of truth to it.  Though on occasion we do see things in the night sky whose origins aren’t readily apparent, no pilot in their right mind would get on the radio and report seeing a UFO if they weren’t 100% certain that it was something hinky.  And even then they’d probably hesitate or even just press the “I forgot” button.

Here’s what I saw.  As I was getting out of the water with Woodsprite I looked back to see how Tacco and Keeper were doing.  They hadn’t been as far out as we had and had a bit more difficulty dealing with the breaking waves.  Another set of at least medium sized waves had come in as Woodsprite and I were getting out (ankle-deep or so by now), and as I looked at Keeper dog-paddling in the whitewater, I saw something blackish and triangular emerging from the water about 10’ from him.  Yes.  OK.  There were seals around.  I’d seen several poke their heads above water.  This did not look like a seal head.  There are also porpoises, and porpoises have dorsal fins.  It was likely a porpoise.  But porpoises also swim in a certain way, which causes their fin to sweep up and then down in a sort of circular motion (hence “porpoising”).  That’s not what this blackish, triangular thing did.  It just sort of moved a bit, and appeared to be pointing at him.  Mind you, this all happened within about a second.  I quickly looked to Tacco who was a few yards from him, and saw that she was firmly telling Keeper to get out of the water NOW.  Clearly she had seen it too.

They both got out and Tacco and I quickly debriefed:

“OK, did you see..”

“YES!  That’s why I told him to get out!”

“Does he know?”

“No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t see it and I didn’t want to freak him out.”

“What did it look like to you?”

“A fin.”

“Yeah, me too.  But it could’ve been a seal.”

“Yup, it could’ve.  But it looked like a fin.”

“Yup, it did.  Could’ve been a porpoise fin too.”

“Agreed.  It could’ve.  Maybe.”

We decided not to make a big deal (until it was time to blog about it of course)…  But we put an end to swimming ops for the day.  I say again, it was probably a porpoise.  Or something else we didn’t even think of yet.  But we won’t forget it.  And I suppose we should get around to telling Keeper the story before this goes live…

We switched over to sand castle ops for the remainder of the afternoon, and the waves continued to grow.  By late afternoon they were impressive by any standard, at least overhead and probably 8’ minimum (and to be clear, the pictures below are not of those waves.  Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of them).  What I assumed were local high schoolers kept showing up with their short boards, and by 5 or so there were at least a dozen out there next to the cliffs to our south.  I mention this because it fascinated me – it was the type of thrilling that ventures into and out of terrifying.  These kids were a few years older than Keeper and there was no safe way into or out of the line up – each paddle out required getting pummeled many times over.  My perspective may have made them appear closer to the rocks than they actually were, but it looked like not only were they dealing with the powerful waves trying to drown them, but the jagged rocks which they were feet from being dashed upon like rag dolls.  And then of course when they rode these beasts it was gorgeous to watch.  I’ve always had an appreciation for surfing; it has now deepened to a great respect.

Next up is San Elijo in Encinitas, another bluff-top campground at a surf-centric beach.  I’m not tired of them yet!

If you’re departing by air out of Long Beach to points North, your flight path takes you over the ocean just north of Palos Verdes, and then into a right turn that takes you back over the coastline at Malibu.  One day few years ago when I was doing just that, we were flying this departure as usual, and my mind wandered toward the normal “where do I want to raise my family?” dilemma.  I mentally hopscotched through the “near a JetBlue domicile would be great, but most of the places we’d want to live aren’t near JetBlue domiciles” squares and landed on “is there anywhere in Southern California we could live?”  Mind you, I hadn’t said a word up to this point – this was all familiar terrain for me, and I generally assume my mental meanderings aren’t of interest to my copilots.  But looking down, I saw the clear water sparkling in the sun, the gorgeous coastline with the Santa Monica mountains rising behind it, the waves breaking, and the huge green lawn in front of Pepperdine University (this is where we generally cross the shore).  Absentmindedly, I tossed out “you know… I could live in Malibu…”

He turned and looked at me blankly.  These being the first words I spoke in flight since “After Takeoff Checklist complete,” it was probably a bit jarring, but more than that, it was random and ridiculous.  Similarly nonsensical things I could’ve opened our flight with:

“you know… I could eat a perfectly seared filet mignon with lobster and butter”

“you know… I could drive a Lamborghini.”

“you know… I could vacation at an overwater bungalow in the Maldives”

“you know… I could not work for the rest of my life and just do whatever I wanted”

Is there anyone who couldn’t live in Malibu?  Sure, there’s the extra twenty or thirty million burning a hole in your wallet you’d need, but details…

There’s something very old school LA about Malibu when you peel back the veneer of fame and fortune.  Gidget was filmed there, the beaches are quite small and have a remote feel to them, everything looks a bit retro…  I picture the Beach Boys lip-syncing to Surfin’ USA in striped suits while people on longboards twice their height pretend to ride waves in the background.  Our choice of RV accommodation did nothing to disabuse me of this image.  The Mailbu RV Park sits on a bluff right above the Pacific Coast Highway with views of the ocean from every site and palm trees scattered throughout.  Unexpectedly, we landed there in the middle of a “rally,” which turned out to be a grouping of people with retro travel trailers dressed up and polished to the nines.  Sort of like an old car show, but with everyone staying the night to party in their cars and a pirate theme to boot.  If we were more ambitious we’d have attempted to mingle more with the rally-goers and taken part in the pirate parties, but we already had a somewhat full evening schedule [read: we fall asleep early].

 

Chief among our priorities was seeing our nephew, who was recently recruited to play water polo for Pepperdine and had a match this weekend.  As the RV park is about 2 or 3 miles up the coast from the campus, it was easy to visit and catch his match, for which he’d arranged getting our tickets.

There’s a funny family anecdote about Woodsprite on one of the first times she saw him at a family gathering.  She’s a bit tentative by nature, and he’s 6’7” with longish hair and a beard (though he may not have had the beard at the time).  When she first met him, he playfully chased after her, angling for a hug, and she came unhinged.  She was terrified of him the entire Thanksgiving weekend and hid whenever he was near.

This hug, however, lasted for about a minute or two; clearly she’s over that now.

Tacco has covered her impressions of a collegiate water polo match previously – I was at least as surprised as she was.  It’s brutal.  I now understand why so many Navy SEALs come from water polo playing backgrounds.  We saw a bloody gash over a player’s nose, another guy come out of the game with a bite wound on his hand, and brawl upon brawl in the water, with multiple “hold downs” where someone’s forcefully keeping an opposing player under for much longer than would seem prudent or legal.  Sure, it’s easy to hold your breath, but not while you’re maximally exerting yourself and don’t have the chance to inhale prior to being yanked under.  I’m surprised there aren’t more incidents of needing to stop the match to drag someone floating face down out of the pool to perform CPR.  Seriously, I am.

 

At any rate, it was an exciting match and Pepperdine defeated Long Beach State soundly, after which we were able to treat our nephew to dinner at Duke’s right on the water.  It happened to be parents’ weekend there as well, which made the stroll around campus after his match even more pleasant.  Hard to beat Pepperdine for campus location / beauty.

We drove up to Calabasas (through surprisingly rugged and remote Malibu Canyon) to visit some more family on Tacco’s side, but other than that it was a beach / rinse off / repeat type of weekend.  So relaxing, and Keeper built on his body boarding skills.  He still ignores his dad’s efforts to coach him on paddling into waves rather than staying in no more than waist-deep water and pushing off the bottom to get his forward motion, but it’s at least partially an 11-year-old’s job to ignore Dad’s advice.

 

The beach right below the RV park was excellent and sparsely visited.  It struck me how incredibly much beach square-footage Malibu sports when compared to the rest of LA – it really benefits from its remoteness.  We toyed with the idea of checking out some of the other beaches in the area, but ultimately decided we had a great one right at our doorstep, so why venture afield?

Perfect weather too, did I mention that?  It was.  LA folk are fond of telling outsiders it’s always like this, but I know from experience it isn’t.  It’s mild much of the time, that’s certainly true.  But crystal clear with perfect visibility and 85 degrees?  No, that’s a great day.  And we had three of them.

Everyone seems chilled out by it all, and we’re looking forward to our next stop in Crystal Cove, just south of LA on the border of Newport and Laguna Beach.

The only negative I can manage to toss in here is that on our drive out, we passed Surfrider Beach in “downtown” Malibu (which doesn’t exist, but this seems to be sort of the center of gravity of the place).  Looking out Tacco’s window I saw perfect, and I do mean PERFECT learner waves breaking off the point in a glassy sea, with what were clearly student surfers doing what I had been hoping to do.  If we had only ventured afield the day before, I could’ve joined them.  Maybe even the whole family!  OK, maybe not.  But if that’s your biggest complaint…