We moved about 30 miles east of San Diego to our first Thousand Trails park, Pio Pico RV Campground. The side of the park we are in is fine, nice but not beautiful. Most of the sites are gravel and fairly level. Fortunately, we knew ahead of time that the sites are “first come, first serve” and made sure we got here early in the day (about 9:30). We got lucky and got one of the last nice sites that were large enough for our rig. It’s only 30 amp, not 50, but we’ve been ok since it’s been cool enough that we’ve only needed one air conditioner.

The whole time we were setting up there were RVers driving around looking for sites and shortly after that we noticed newcomers being turned around and heading to the “north side” of the park. That side does not have sewer connections, only water and electric. Apparently people that can’t get into the south side go to the north side and wait for a site to open up so they can move to it.

There’s really not much to do in the area. But we were so busy in San Diego for a week it was really nice to just ‘chill’ here for a couple of weeks.

One good thing, Mike finally got to play with the drone! We’ve been staying at places where flying the drone was illegal. Here’s a few aerial shots of the campground and our site.

We visited this beautiful area in San Diego. We decided not to visit the zoo or any of the museums and just walked around the grounds to view the incredible buildings and landscaping. We were amazed that not only is entry to the park free, there are public restrooms and free parking, too!

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One of the highlights is the Moreton Bay Fig Tree, which is over a hundred years old!

The Spanish Village Art Center is also part of the park and includes over 30 artists’ studios.

Since we definitely got our steps in that day we decided to go out for one more nice dinner. Years ago, Mike had spent a lot of time working in San Diego. He remembered a small off-the-beaten-path Italian restaurant he had always enjoyed out near Shelter Island. Fortunately, we found out that the Old Venice Restaurant still has great food!

We visited this cute, ritzy, beach town above San Diego. Apparently a lot of famous people have homes here, but we didn’t see any (bummer)! We did see a beautiful beach and some great views of the ocean. The area is also known for the seals and sea lions that warm themselves on the rocks.

After spending some time near the ocean we walked through the village area and had margaritas and an excellent lunch at Puesto! They live up to their slogan of Trophy Tacos and Perfect Margaritas!

The park we are staying at is in Mission Bay, which is about 2 miles from Mission Beach/Pacific Beach, a cute, typical, little beachside town. We had a really good dinner at the PB Ale House rooftop deck with an amazing view!

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After all that food we needed to get some steps in so we went for a long walk on their ‘boardwalk’ and caught another beautiful sunset!

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Since you can never visit too many Farmers Markets, we visited Hillcrest Farmers Market! We would definitely recommend a visit to this market! It is more conveniently located and easier to park at that the one in Little Italy, and we honestly liked it a lot better. We picked up some fresh pasta, sauce, and bakery bread to have for dinner later.

After that delicious dinner we took a stroll around the waterfront surrounding the park and caught a beautiful sunset.

Well, we finally made it to the west coast! So great to see an ocean again!

We stayed at Mission Bay RV Resort which is really just a blacktopped parking lot with hookups and lines to mark spots. But it’s a great place to stay if you want to spend time in San Diego. And surprisingly, almost every site has its own tree!

Our first night here we walked to the original Rubio’s Coastal Grill for dinner. This location has counter service which was okay, but sadly our tacos were only mediocre.

The next morning we visited the Farmers Market in Little Italy. It’s a nice market right near the San Diego Bay. We love Farmers Markets and this was a nice one, and we got a really good panini for breakfast!

Since we were downtown we decided to visit some of the more touristy areas, starting with Seaport Village. This is a nice shopping area along the water near the harbor area.

Finally, we went to the Gaslamp Quarter to walk around and wound up getting ice cream for lunch!

Our final stop in the area was the remains of the Bombay Beach Resort on the Salton Sea, which is actually a lake that was created in 1905 when the Colorado River flooded the area. Developers branded it the ‘Salton Riviera’ and created a resort that thrived during the 50s and 60s where guests swam, water-skied, and golfed. Sadly, this desert region gets almost no rainfall and with no drainage outlet, the water was polluted by pesticides and runoff from nearby farms. The pollution killed scores of fish which decomposed on the beach. The odor of decaying fish and fears of health problems caused the resort to be mostly abandoned. Although the population has risen recently, it’s still considered a “living ghost town.”

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Bombay Beach is not lost on ‘Hollywood’, it attracts many photographers, filmmakers, and tourists, to the point that locals tend to ask visitors if they are filmmakers that are there to shoot a documentary. There were two different film crews shooting in the area the afternoon we were there.

We thought the Bombay Beach Drive-In was creepy enough looking on its own. Apparently so did a film crew who was shooting a pre-production trailer for a possible horror movie!

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The second production crew was on the other end of town shooting a music video. We still don’t know who the singer is but it looked like a fairly high level production so who knows, maybe someday we’ll see it on MTV and go AHA! THAT’S WHO THAT WAS! (If only we watched MTV 🙂 )

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Salvation Mountain is located pretty much in the middle of Slab City, which gets it name from the concrete slabs that remained after a WWII Marine Corps training camp was torn down. The area is currently an off-the-grid squatter community for people who choose to live outside of mainstream society. We’ve been curious about the area so we drove through it after visiting Salvation Mountain.

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East Jesus is a community within Slab City that provides “… a refuge for artists, musicians, survivalists, writers, scientists, laymen and other wandering geniuses.” All of the ‘artwork’ is created using only recycled materials. We gotta say, it was pretty cool! We just don’t know what they have against dolphins?!?

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There aren’t many places to eat in the area, but luckily we found the Buckshot Deli and Diner. They have some of the best Carne Asada tacos we’ve ever had!!

Salvation Mountain is a quirky attraction that is about 50 miles from where we are staying in El Centro, California so we decided to make it a day trip.

Leonard Knight created Salvation Mountain to share the message that “God Is Love.” Words won’t do it justice, so you’ll have to look at the pictures!

And yes, that first picture of Mike, tell us you’re not whistling the theme from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”!

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As we said in our last post, we weren’t real crazy about Yuma and decided to move to Rio Bend RV Park in El Cento, CA. It is about 80 miles from Yuma heading toward San Diego, which is our next stop.

Are we glad we did! There isn’t much in the area, but the park is much nicer. The spots are small, but there are hedges between the sites for a little privacy, and, of course, it wasn’t crowded while we were there.

It’s a great place for a day trip to Salvation Mountain and Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea, which we’ll cover in the next couple of posts!

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Interestingly, they have a really large and nice garden area that overlooks their golf course and another large pond.