Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research facility in the Palomar Mountain Range (located at 6,142′ elevation). Inside the observatory is a 200″ Palomar telescope, the world’s largest telescope from 1949-1975. Unfortunately, due to the snow and the proclivity for San Diegans to go absolutely crazy over snow in our local mountains, the observatory remained closed …
The Pacific Southwest Railway Museum Association’s mission statement is to preserve history through physical legacy, historical context, cultural landscape and experience of rail transportation. The Campo rail station dates back to 1916, a stop along the San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railway line. In order to connect Arizona to San Diego, the tracks had to …
Just a minute past our campsite at the end of Contact Flat is the trail marker for the Alabama Hills trailhead. This trail has several branching off points but we stuck to the right, veering around the hill we were camped on. We ended up directly on the other side of it and so instead …
The Alabama Hills are like no where else on earth. Its rounded rocks and eroded hills settled before the jagged peaks of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States, formed over 100 million years ago as earth’s plates pushed into each other with no place for the land to go but up. …
The Nutcracker debuted in Russia in 1892. England was the first country outside of Russia to perform the iconic ballet, almost forty years after its premiere. It slowly began making its way across the globe, entertaining San Franciscans ten years later and New Yorkers ten years after that. It did not truly gain world wide …
The Los Angeles Zoo is located in Griffith Park, just a few miles from Griffith Observatory. The Los Angeles Zoo originally opened as the Griffith Park Zoo in 1912, right on Griffith J. Griffith’s ostrich farm. The zoo now cares for 270 different species, 58 of which are endangered. The zoo has been working with …
Griffith Observatory sits atop Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park at 1,135 feet elevation. The original 3,000 acre property where Griffith Observatory was built was donated by Griffith J. Griffith (you have to love that name) in 1896. Griffith J. Griffith also donated funds to build a planetarium and an observatory. His goal was to make …
Casa del Prado Theater is the historic reconstruction of a 1915 Panama California Exposition building at Balboa Park. The building is used by the San Diego Junior Theater, the country’s oldest junior theater program. It is a great place to continue our introduction to theater, especially when the production is SpongeBob SquarePants the Musical.
Anza Borrego State Park is named after the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza and ‘borrego‘, the Spanish name for bighorn sheep. Although I have seen bighorn sheep on this trail, and they were spotted here yesterday, the only evidence of bighorn sheep today was their scat. This nature trail is numbered and the printed …
Culp Valley Overlook Trail located inside Culp Valley Primitive Campground offers incredible views of Borrego Valley and perspective on the magnitude of the state’s largest state park, Anza Borrego. Anza Borrego State Park is 935 square miles, roughly one fifth the size of San Diego County. Anza Borrego State Park is bigger than 44 of …
Rhino Savannah is a four-acre addition to the Living Desert Zoo in Palm Desert; their last one to be constructed. It houses twelve different species, including two critically endangered black rhinos. The walls of the cave entrance to Rhino Savannah is filled with naked mole-rats, burrowing rodents native to the Horn of Africa. Rhino Savannah …
Temecula Valley has about fifty wineries to choose from, all of which vary in cost, comfort, amenities, popularity, flashiness, exclusivity, and wine quality. Today we wanted to go to wineries that we haven’t been to before. Even though we are from the area, we haven’t visited many of the local wineries since there are so …
San Diego SEAL tour is a two-hour narrated tour which takes you from land at Seaport Village into the water at Shelter Island. This was a first for all of us, on this tour and in an amphibious vehicle (which really feels more like a bus on water than a boat). Based on the tour …
The San Diego Zoo is an accredited botanical garden. The zoo’s mission to safeguard wildlife doesn’t stop at animals but includes the plants that animals depend on. There are 700,000 plants at the zoo and forty horticulturalists that care for them (at both the zoo and the Safari Park, as well as off-site farms that …
North Shore Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest was calling our names this long Labor Day weekend. It is a touch more than a two hour drive from our Oceanside home base, but it smells like pines, and has cool breezes at 7,000 feet elevation. We have explored Yellow Post sites in …