1 - 4 March 2007
Chula Vista, CA (again)
KOA RV Park
Dear Friends of Barbara and Charlie (B/C) ...
Humphrey again. This email covers end of the caravan, the drive from Ensenada to the border at Tijuana then to Chula Vista, CA.NOTE: As reported in my last email, B/C were scheduled to spend the last few days and end their caravan in San Felipe near the top of the Sea of Cortez. However, at the last minute the Wagon Masters learned their year-old reservation had been summarily canceled by the San Felipe RV park. The majority of us elected to return to San Diego and spend our remaining time seeing that city. It was well worth it.
The highlight of a restful few days was a boat tour of San Diego Harbor which fronts the Navy North Island naval base. It was beautiful shirt sleeve weather however chilly out on the water (picture of us courtesy of our new friends Ken and Ethel Cinder).
Charlie was looking for one of the prototype Naval Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) just launched, the square rigger was not it in disguise. We saw quite a few Navy combat ships, many of them to support Marine operations such as this LHA 6 -- name eludes me. It carries about 4000 marines, with their helicopters and assault landing craft that exit out the stern when it is flooded.
One unusual sighting was a Navy Seabee support ship putting out to sea, remarked by the tour guide as not moving from its pier in recent years. It holds all the materials and equipment needed for Seabees to build a temporary air base. Wonder where it was going? The ship was protected by four armed harbor defense craft, one of which came over to check us out. They were all business, didn’t smile or return our waves. It was a little frightening to look down the barrel of an armed 50 caliber machine gun pointed at you.
We sighted nuclear subs in port surrounded by a security net. In fact there were security nets around most everything afloat, including a floating dry dock with a navy ship in for repair, some destroyers in port and the Navy Hospital Ship Mercy just between tours caring for civilians caught in the Indonesian tsunami of last year.
Of course San Diego is a Navy town but what surprised Charlie was that the City was the namesake for a light cruiser in WWII with an amazing war record. Charlie recalls many of the battles listed.
The ships, the security and the history left B/C, as Navy veterans, impressed, proud and sober.
This is a monumental statue on loan to the City of San Diego that is based upon the famous Life Magazine picture taken on VJ Day in Times Square, New York. Here the girl is portrayed as a Navy Nurse. It brings back memories for B/C of their Navy romance 40 some years ago in Seattle, which takes us back to the beginning and ...THE END
FYI next: In a couple weeks B/C will start an another odyssey following Highway 66 from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, a the trail the Joads took in the 1930’s in Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath“, and, the route in 1951 Barbara’s mother drove with Barbara and her brother when they moved from Chicago to the West Coast. She was ten and we’ll see how much she remembers and how things have changed. Maybe more on that later.
In the mean time B/C are vacationing near Acton, CA, in the Thousand Trails Solodad Canyon RV Preserve, through which Manley, in 1849, lead the survivors of Death Valley to safety in the San Fernando Valley.
Humphrey for Charlie and Barbara
