San Diego - The Other City of Brotherly Love

Aloha all,

my bother and his family usually lives 12,000km away, but he currently does a sabbatical at San Diego State University. That's only 4,000km from Maui, so of course we went to visit them. We would have stopped anywhere between Hawaii and North Carolina to see them, but we enjoyed that it was San Diego, which has always been on our list of places to go when the volcano blows.

The view from Coronado to Downtown San Diego

We spent just over a week in and around San Diego and, as always, we are amazed how much we have seen and done in such a short time. We love Maui, but life is so full when you are traveling.

Being loving brothers means we split our time fairly evenly between pleasant excursions and vicious competitions. We played four different disc golf courses. The results were better for me when we played on weekday mornings while Hannes had to be in school.

He might lose more discs,
but we lose more rounds

San Diego has a great variety
of disc golf courses 

We also got to play beach ultimate, which is always a fun, but humbling experience. If I am not forgetting something, this was the first time I played ultimate on the US mainland. As usual in ultimate, the local players on Mission Beach were friendly and equally welcoming to all of us. But I think they were a little more impressed by Hannes, who can actually run in the soft sand, in contrast to his dad and his uncle.

Beach Ultimate at Mission Beach

For a less strenuous, but equally fierce competition we played Settlers of Catan and Chess. We also played a few rounds of pool, but it's a bit of a blur because Sandra sank all her balls except the black 8 in one turn. It was definitely the peak of her pool playing career.

I tied my brother in chess; against Hannes
I got redemption for the close disc golf losses

We took a weekend excursion to Joshua Tree National Park. Along the way we saw the longest running outdoor play in the US. “Ramona” has been performed at the “Ramona Bowl” in Hemet, CA since 1923!  So it looks like they have their math right, we got there just in time for the centennial season. It’s a refreshingly honest depiction of early California history. Just proving that this is a great country, even while or maybe even more so when pointing out some flaws. And it's not a woke, modern production. The book was written in 1884 and the play has been a beloved event here for 100 years. 

The setting and the production is very impressive, with about 100 actors and a dozen horses on a spectacular, natural stage. In my view, the Ramona Bowl competes with Red Rocks in Colorado for the best outdoor performance venue in the country. 

The centennial season of "Ramona"

As you probably all know, we love any National Park, and Joshua Tree is no exception. We had not been there in about 30 years...about time for a return visit! The funny looking trees, the blooming cacti and spectacular wildflowers alone are worth a trip at least once a decade. We don't get desert plants like that even in the dry areas on Maui. And what a treat to be there in the spring blooming season...and before the summer heat. In San Diego, it was unusually chilly at times; on our hike at Joshua Tree NP we loved the cool breeze.

A Joshua Tree at Joshua Tree National Park

Cactus in bloom

Devil's Horns or a Joshua Halo?

There is something about a blooming cactus 

On our way back to San Diego, we were able to briefly visit Tom & Lori in La Quinta. They are friends from Maui who moved to the desert a few years ago. Always nice to see where friends live and we’ll put it on the list of places to visit a little longer whenever we make it this far west in Joy. Tom has already promised us 24 feet to park Joy in their beautiful community; now I just need to negotiate a 24 stroke handicap when we play a round on their private golf course.

A hui hou, Tom & Lori!

Back in San Diego, we explored several neighborhoods: The history of Old Town, the gardens and museums of Balboa Park, the intriguing little Map Museum of La Jolla, a short visit close to the Mexican border at the Tijuana Estuary, a fun walk in San Carlos, where Japeha live and the impressive coast at Torres Pine State Park.

Cactus Garden at Balboa Park

If they build a tower,
Chris & Sandra will climb it.

Cliffs at Torres Pine State Park

Maybe my favorite new discovery of this week were the Velella Velellas or "By-the-Wind Sailors". We saw hundreds of these unique creatures, (which surprisingly are not jellyfish, but their own genus of animal). It’s fairly rare to see them, because usually they float on the open ocean. But their only mode of transportation is to use their translucent sails to let the wind blow them across the ocean. Every few years, the wind blows the wrong way for too long and thousands of them end up on a beach. That’s bad for the Velella Velellas, but makes for great pictures:

Velella Velella on the beach

Velella Velellas on the beach

We also went to a high school theater play at the Patrick Henry High School, where Hannes goes to school. Well, technically, we went to half a play. Even though the school is named after arguably America’s greatest orator of all time, the quality of the production was not quite up to Patrick Henry’s standards. Maybe we are a little spoiled from the excellent performances we saw at Baldwin and Seabury on Maui. But if Patrick Henry had forgotten his words and had gotten lost in his notes, I doubt he would have inspired a revolution like he did.

Last year, we met a descendant of Patrick Henry,
now we know a student of Patrick Henry High School.

It’s always nice to have a local connection: Even though they just moved there a few weeks ago, Jan and Petra had already scouted out a lot of local breweries. It seems like they check out a new brewery almost every time they drive Hannes to basketball practice. And Hannes has enough basketball practices that Jan & Petra might get to know all 160 breweries in San Diego before they leave. Lucky for them, San Diego has the most and the best local breweries anywhere in America. We have learned that this is a distinction claimed by every single place in America, with the possible exception of the areas north of Fairbanks, Alaska and the Hawaiian islands northwest of Kauai. 

With that logo, the Pure Project Brewery is
a natural favorite for a hydrology professor 

And that’s the news from Lake San Diego, where all the disc golf courses are pretty, half of the theater plays are spectacular and all the breweries are better than average.

Chris & Sandra