Richard & Sylvia's RV Adventures

Day 40 & 41 - Tuesday, April 10, 2007 & Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Coronado Island, CA to Carlsbad, CA – 40 Miles

We enjoyed camping at Coronado– watched Navy Helicopters land on Aircraft Carriers -the campground was right on the water with a view of San Diego and this huge bridge crossing the bay from San Diego to Coronado.

The flowers displays on the highway and in the whole town of Carlsbad were fantastic.  Romano and Linda, we found you skinny pine trees– they are all here. 

We arrived at Sandy and Len’s and to our amazement there was a Fifth-wheel RV parked in their driveway? Hum, they have been holding out on us; they are RVing as well!  Just before we barged in we thought we better give them a call; something did not seem right.  Sure enough Einstein, our friendly GPS system took us to their former home, the address Richard put into Einstein,ups! As they say garbage in garbage out holds true with GPS’s as well.  We did find them….they were only a few streets away. 

John, one thing I forgot to mention – around Yuma, AZ and crossing the mountains into CA we saw many solar panels on roofs.  Some were the old type panels as we are accustomed to seeing in the DC  area; however, we also noticed a new type of panel that seem to be part of the roof shingles themselves, just slightly darker. This looks promising

As we mentioned Carlsbad is awash in flowers – it reminds us of Germany– Sandy and Lens house was no exception. 

Here’s a panoramic photo of the hill side.

Their home was located on a Hill  overlooking the Pacific in the distance… we decided to move in… just kidding. 

They were gracious hosts and showed us the flower fields and that evening we had dinner at their favorite seafood restaurant.  The company, food and wine were excellent.  We also did some housekeeping and laundry.  Speaking of laundry, it appears when we do laundry we seem to leave a few pieces behind.  Sylvia had mentioned to Sandy about the “leaving laundry issue”, Sylvia was looking for her favorite capries in the RV to no avail… don’t know if this is a Freudian slip or not and she something about she means to return here… 

We have been experiencing some louder than normal noises with the RV engine lately.  We got a name of a reliable place in Oceanside, CA from a fellow camper at the Coronado campground.  It had started to sound like a huge lawn mower without a muffler and was noticeably loosing power going up the hills.  Turns out that the issue was a leaking exhaust manifold gasket; the same one we replaced back in Woodbridge back in October, Ouch!  The shop also said the resonator was coming apart at the seams; seem like we recall hitting a speed bump at Kingsbay too fast and remember the bump hitting the underside of the RV.  No choice but to repair it as the plan is to cross the Rockies and Richard will need all the power he can get going up those “small” hills. 

While the RV was being repaired Sandy and Len took us for lunch at their Country Club where Sandy plays tennis.  During our visit were able to catch up on the our families and old friends and took several long walks on the  beach which was only three miles away. 

We sure hated to leave – the Rogersons were such gracious hosts – the scenery and the weather were lovely - but the road was calling!

posted by Richard @ 10:08 PM