Ah for the good old days when getting together with grandkids was easy. Regan and Carter were especially easy – they learned to fly to Florida by themselves at an early age. And summers at Onawa were a given. Now things are getting more challenging especially when grandkid #1 – Reagan – is a college student at faraway University of California San Diego.
She, understandably, couldn’t fly from UCSD to Florida so we turned the tables and flew to see her. And it worked out just fine!
Actually, my original plan was to drive from Florida to San Diego in the Tesla. Cooler heads prevailed and the Tesla road trip got as far as Austin, TX. That was sufficient to test out electric car travel but not so far as to lose the copilot somewhere in West Texas when she went stir crazy after all those hours watching the nothingness of that landscape pass by. And, as Judy pointed out, once in San Diego, a six-day haul, we’d have to turn around and do it all over again to get home. Austin turned out to be the half-way point.
Thursday, March 31, 2022 – Tampa to San Diego
Our trip to San Diego started on my mother’s 100th birthday, Mom and Dad’s 77th wedding anniversary and 10 years to the day from the day she passed away. We didn’t plan it that way, and the coincidence didn’t occur to me until just now, but Mom and Dad would be looking down with great satisfaction, I’m sure. They’d be pleased by the date coincidence but mostly pleased because they so much loved their first grandchild and would be happy that she’s become such a fine person.
We picked up a car at the airport and drove to our hotel near the UCSD campus.
Friday, April 1, 2022 – UCSD
We had two main objectives with his trip: to spend time with Reagan and to see the UCSD campus so we can envision her environment when we’re sitting by the fire whiling away the hours in our retiree dotage. When we’re home and if we had a fire place, that is. We do have plenty of dotage, you can be sure.
Reagan had school stuff to do so we spent the first part of Friday exploring the campus on our own. It’s a modern campus – no 200-year-old ivy-covered buildings here. It’s built on the side of a hill so the campus runs downhill from south to north. Reagan’s Eleanor Roosevelt college (UCSD is divided into seven such colleges to keep things manageable) is at the top of the hill. That means classrooms and dining for her are down hill and the trip home is up hill. She commutes on a skateboard.
I’ll let the pictures give you an idea of the campus. She’s taking enough science and math courses to make your (my) head spin. Her objective is to major somewhere in the STEM world.
The campus is technically within walking distance of the Pacific but it’s not an easy hike, especially if you’re carrying a surf board. You can catch views of the ocean from campus and we noticed a number of hang gliders catching air currents over the coast so we hopped in the car to investigate. There’s a fairly large hang gliding facility there; somehow I resisted the temptation to take a lesson.
Reagan freed up around three PM so she met up with us at her dorm and took us on a guided campus tour to fill in her perspective of what we’d seen by ourselves. We discovered we’d had lunch at the same outside dining facility within minutes of each other. Small world, considering the size of the campus!
The Torrey Pines golf course is no more than 10 miles from campus – we could see it from the hang gliding spot – and that was our destination for dinner that evening.
You probably know that Torrey Pines is a big deal golf course. It hosts the PGA’s Farmers Insurance Open every year. It was dark when we got there so we couldn’t see much of the course but the three-course meal we had was of championship caliber. A very pleasant evening.
Saturday, April 2, 2022 – Catalina Island
Rather than sticking poor Reagan with the prospect of entertaining two grandparents for an entire weekend, we decided to make a weekend excursion out of it. Catalina Island, not far off the coast of southern California, was a logical destination.
You get to Catalina by ferry boat. The closest one for us left from Dana Point at 9:30 AM. Dana Point is a surfing spot of some renown, and is a strong hour’s drive from UCSD so we left at 7 AM to make sure we didn’t miss the boat. The trip was almost uneventful except that, as usual, Nana had her Dunkin’ Craplota attack. She googled up a Dunkin’ store on our route. Only problem? It is located on Camp Pendleton behind a rather imposing security check point. We turned around; Nana had to suffer for another 30 minutes to get food until we got to Dana Point.
The ferry took about an hour and a half (40-odd miles). It was cloudy and cool – I sat most of the way on the open deck. The only break in the monotony was a rather impressive display put on by a pod of dolphins.
Avalon is the only town of any significance on Catalina. We docked there and walked from the pier into town to find a place to finalize our arrangements for the day’s activities.
Reagan had heard of Carter’s Miami Mahi Mayhem experience with us in Florida. She wanted her piece of the action so we arranged for a fishing charter from Avalon the afternoon of our arrival. As in the case of Carter’s trip, we had no idea what to expect. So we dumped our bags at our in-town airbnb and reported to the town dock to board the Mojo. Everything was located within a few blocks of each other; the weather was ok but in the 60s so not warm.
One thing a charter fishing captain worth his or her salt abhors is to come home fish-less. The tips are lousy and so are the TripAdvisor reviews. Our man ( who’s name escapes me) was no exception. He knew where the white fish were biting. Not as exciting as pulling in a 35-pound Mahi but, hey, we caught a heck-of-a-lot more fish -15 or so decent-sized fish – so had excitement of a different sort. We were never more than a few hundred meters from shore, the ocean was calm, the scenery nice, lots of birds and sea lions to watch and the fishing action was steady. In all, a fun afternoon.
The captain cleaned our catch, creating a sea gull mayhem for our enjoyment. We were back with the fillets to our house by 3:30, in time for a rest to recover from our early morning revelry call and trip up the coast.
But what to do with all that fish? Our captain had pointed us to a restaurant that proved to be only a few steps from our airbnb. They did, indeed, agree to cook up our catch but not without some hesitancy – the restaurant was quite busy that evening. But cook they did and we had a very tasty dinner. We had half of the fish done up as fish tacos and the other half as lightly-breaded fried fillets. We split the leftovers with Reagan and the next day and they made our Sunday night dinner at the San Diego airport hotel.
Sunday, April 3, 2022 – Catalina Island
Time to see what Catalina Island is all about, outside Avalon, that is. How to do it? A jeep ride with the Catalina Island Conservancy seemed like a good idea. The Conservancy is a private land trust that controls 88% of the island, excluding of course the town of Avalon and certain other private holdings. As the name implies, the Conservancy is set up to conserve the natural features of Catalina. So after a quick breakfast at an outside bakery, we mounted up our jeep with a knowledgable and pleasant driver/guide and headed for the hills.
The 20th Century history of Catalina is interesting. The island was originally home to native peoples and eventually claimed by Spain, Mexico and then the U.S. Owners began to develop a tourist business on the island beginning in the late 1800s but things got really interesting when William Wriggly of chewing gum and Chicago Cubs fame bought the place in 1919. He built infrastructure to support the tourist trade, used the island as the Cub’s spring training facility and even used the island to make movies, particularly westerns. He imported a herd of bison/buffalos for the movies. They were never repatriated and today the herd continues to call Catalina home.
Eventually William’s son Phillip who continued in his father’s footsteps. But in 1975 he deeded his holdings to The Catalina Island Conservancy. The Wriggly family continues to own an estate in the interior, including a fancy house or two, vineyards and horse stables.
The pictures show the rugged landscape of the interior. The roads are minimal, often dirt and not conducive to passenger car travel. We saw the buffalos and stopped at the island’s airport, Airport in the Sky. The airport is another Wriggly creation; they leveled two mountain tops and filled in the valley to create a 3,200 foot runway. Because of its location, the terrain at either end of the runway features a quick drop down the side of the mountain, making careful flying essential for an enjoyable visit.
Upon our return we had a lunch at a Mexican restaurant, checked out of our hotel and walked to the waterfront to board our return ferry at 5:00 PM. We were back to the campus by 9 PM, where we dropped Reagan and then made our way back to the airport and our hotel there. The leftovers from yesterday’s fishing trip, zapped in the microwave, served admirably as dinner. Next morning, we flew back to Florida.
Mission accomplished. We saw the campus and renewed our 19-year relationship with a really incredible granddaughter who we love so very much.
