Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival 2011, San Diego

This weekend Jennifer and I headed down to Balboa Park's Cherry Blossom Festival to spend a day in Japanese culture and to be in solidarity with our Japanese brothers and sisters. We also have some friendly photo competition going on for spotting and capturing the best shot.

We share our day of Japanese adventure, starting with the Festival.

The Japanese Friendship Garden is a hidden jewel I hadn't visited until this day, 2 acres that will make you feel you are in Japan. Given the recent events, this was the perfect place to go. The festival celebrates the earth cycle that no matter how harsh the winter, spring will come and life is renewed.


Jennifer got the best cherry blossom shot.


the best sign of spring,


the best Zen garden,


the most creative bamboo dripper,


and most creative temple with reflections and her off center signature.


Read here about another Zen garden.

I'll claim the best temple composition,


Koi pond garden,


and people picture.


Jennifer's body language shows her determination to be a first rate photographer and film maker. And yes, Jennifer, Mr. Sidewalk Monitor was right. Your foot was off the rock.


We walked outside the Garden to catch a glimpse of the canyon where work is going on to add 14 acres to the current two acres. A pine tree will be planted as a memorial for those who lost their lives in the earthquake and tsunami, symbolically anchoring one side of a bridge across the canyon. We could already see many blooming cherry trees in the canyon. How beautiful this will be for the people of San Diego when finished!


We walked over to the Menghi to see the Maneki Neko exhibit. the Japanese beckoning cats. Jennifer and I couldn't figure out why all the cats had a raised paw, some left, some right pawed. Read here why.


We topped the adventure off with a late Japanese lunch at Katani's in Carmel Valley, Udon noodle soup, tempura, and some Japanese lessons from Jennifer. A great day, even if Jennifer did top me in the photography category.

On Foot in San Diego: Arrowmaker Ridge

Rancheros introducing themselves in Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981):
Don Diego: Don Diego from San Fernando.
Don Francisco: Don Francisco from San Jose.
Don Fernando: Don Fernando from San Diego.
Don Jose: Don Jose from San Bernardino.
Luis Obispo: Luis Obispo from Bakersfield.

Hiking Rancho Cuyamaca this weekend got me off to a good start for my spring project of locating and exploring the old Mexican ranchos of San Diego, and some good exercise to boot.

Hoping that this first trek since my "six hikers missing" would be uneventful, I joined twelve other hikers from The Gourmet Hiking Club, a group started fifteen years ago by six outdoor and food minded teachers, to hike up to Arrowmaker ridge in the Cuyamaca Mountains in eastern San Diego County. Kathleen and Wayne, two of the other "six missing", have come along for the hike. Kathleen, I'm not surprised - she's a Scot and usually up for any adventure or misadventure, but Wayne was not an experienced hiker before Secret Canyon and I wasn't sure we'd get him back out.

The Cedar fire roared through our hiking area in the very early morning hours of October 26, 2003. By the time it was contained the fire storm had burned 280,278 acres, destroyed 2,820 buildings and killed 15 people, the largest wildfire in California history. Seven years later we were walking the forest's destruction and rejuvenation.

Just off the parking area at trail head was the ruin of the Dyar house, built in the 1920's, burned in the fire and undergoing rejuvenation like the surrounding forest lands.


Rancho Cuyamaca has a checkered history as do many of San Diego's ranchos. The Mexican government began to distribute lands when they took over from the Spanish in 1821, and our rancho here wasn't granted until 1845, just before the Americans took over California in 1848. The Mexican governor, Pio Pico, was giving out land to his friends and family just before the cession of California to the US and gave 36,000 acres to his friend, Agustin Alvarado, who had never set foot in the Cuyamacas. Thing is, there were no maps or established legal boundaries for the grant, a guy he sent out to start a lumber mill to make some money for him got run off by those pesky Indians - the nerve of those Kumeyaay objecting to people coming in to take over their land - and Alvarado had to sell off the rancho piece by piece to pay the lawyer representing his case in US courts. More disputes arose when gold was discovered in 1870 on the north side of Stonewall Mountain. The bottom line is the rancho's ownership was divided and subdivided over the years. The Dyar family bought over 20,000 acres in 1923 and ten years later sold it to the sate of California. Oila, we have this beautiful Cuyamaca Rancho State Park! Lucky for us.

We set off with a clear, cool morning through what would become a familiar sight, dead trees and regrowth,


coming to a meadow cleared for ranching in the old days.


At one end of the meadow stood the "grandfather tree". Mike, the group leader for the day who knew the trail, told the story that when the rancher was clearing the meadow, an Indian elder came to him to ask to have the tree spared as it was significant to the tribe. It was left standing and when the Cedar fire came blazing through, the fire split around it and the tree was left unburned.


We passed dead trees still standing like statues after seven years, a preview of what was to come farther up our walk.


Many stronger trees were surviving with new growth, odd looking with their blackened trunks and limbs.


We scrambled up rock formations,


uphill to a mesa through vast burned out areas that won't recover for another 50 years,


leaving the trail to cross this high meadow, looking for the site of an ancient Kumeyaay village on the ridge.


We moved up the ridge across fallen trees into dense brush,


finally coming to our destination at the outcropping of rocks at the top of the ridge,


where a nice floral tablecloth was spread and each hiker brought out his/her prepared dish for a delicious luncheon. Hence, the name of the club. We had gourmet sandwiches, a cheese log, various desserts, peach Schnapps. I think I could get used to this, forget the trail mix stuff.


Scattered across the rocks were mortar holes for grinding acorns and wild buckwheat, and on the ground myriads of broken pottery shards, remnants of past lives on this outcropping.


I found this tree, nearly back to its old shape but unable to discard the old limbs, like a divorcee and her ex.


Jillian spotted what appeared to be a carved eagle on an upturned root with a tree branch Indian headdress.


The cloud mist had moved in while we ate our lunch, and followed us down the mountain.


A mystical ending to a mystical day on Arrowmaker Ridge.

Afoot in San Diego: Imperial Beach, Donuts to Die For

Jennifer and I headed for Imperial Beach today. I wanted mainly to check out the Pier and a donut shop I had seen on Noah Tafolla's Wonderland show on San Diego's KPBS. Jennifer had just finished a morning swim meet. She was tired, more interested in the fish and chips at the end of the Pier, and glad there weren't a lot of historical buildings her Ouma wanted to see.


Imperial Beach is the very southernmost outpost of San Diego. Step across the Tijuana River and you're in Mexico...but first you'll have to get across the Border Fence the separates San Diego from Tijuana, more than 900 miles of fence completed to date but that's a story for another time.

Photo downloaded from Wikipedia

Early Anglo settlement of Imperial Beach was part of the 1887 land boom of San Diego when a couple fellows thought they would build a beach resort for folks looking for relief from the heat of Imperial Valley. If I were to pick a year for time travel in San Diego, it would be 1887. It must have been a jumpin' year. Even Wyatt Earp was here.

It's hard to miss that this is a surfin' town. Monuments, sidewalk surf art, surf shops, surfer dudes everywhere.


We walked down the Dunes, I.B.'s beach, toward the pier. One couple must have been getting practice for I.B.'s annual Sand Castle contest, the US Open of Sand Castle Building. They were adults with a full on man-size shovel, not the usual kid stuff seen on other beaches. Fortunately, the next competition is almost a year off. These guys look like they need a little more practice before getting to the level of the usual entries.


At the end of the pier, we enjoyed some fish and chips at a little outdoor fish place. Even though it was a misty day, we could see down to the Coronado Islands off Mexico.


The culinary highlight, though, was the Stardust Donut Shop on Palm Avenue, a drive in, walk up to the window place in need of a paint job but the donuts and cinnamon rolls are heavenly. Fortunately, they are not the huge Cinnabon type and no heavy frosting. Still, Jennifer and I had the good sense to buy just one glazed donut each for today and a cinnamon roll to save for Sunday morning.


The shop is run by two elderly brothers who have apparently been a fixture for the last thirty years. By now they open up when they get there and close when all the donuts are gone and a gaggle of customers hang around waiting for the next batch.

Jennifer's interest was beginning to wane... the Tijuana Estuary Reserve will have to wait for another time.

On Foot in San Diego: Ocean Beach, the Haight Ashbury of San Diego

I intend to finish my stories about Scotland and Morocco, but I couldn't resist writing about our excursion to Ocean Beach.

This past weekend Hayley, Jennifer and I decided to check out Ocean Beach, a funky little coastal town north northwest of downtown San Diego. On the drive down, I had the girls read the history of the neighborhood - naturally - and they were taken by Wonderland, an amusement park built on the beach in 1913 and washed away by high tides three years later. I was able to locate a photo showing it was quite the structure.

O.B.- residents are OBecians - was laid out by a couple developers, Billy Carlson and Frank Higgins, in 1887, during the first boom of San Diego, at the time Jesse Shepard was building his Villa Montezuma in Sherman Heights on the other side of downtown San Diego. In spite of its beautiful location, the town was a remote and hard to get to place until Interstate 8 connected in 1971. In the 1960's O.B. was the Haight Asbury of San Diego and still has that organic store, mom and pop business atmosphere.


Our plan was to check out any history and sights of the town but I sweetened the deal with a promise to do some shopping in the Newport Avenue vintage shops. I heard some groans when I suggested we browse an antique store - by vintage, they had more in mind some clothes - but they thought the store was pretty cool, and I took advantage of the opportunity to slip in some more historical stuff.

We checked out the clothing shop next door...


Jennifer is always the hat fashionista,


Then we walked the length of the Ocean Beach Pier, 1,971 feet, more than one third mile long, the longest concrete pier on the West Coast.


I wondered why in 1966 they decided to build this pier. No boats around, no harbor. Well, it's purely for the purpose of recreation, walking and fishing. Sounds like something OBecians would do.


We didn't find any feral parrots that hang out in OB, the O.B. "air force", but Hayley and Jennifer checked out the pelicans.


These guys are so regal flying up and down the coast.


End of the day is coming,


Hug your sister, and let's be off to World Famous for dinner.

Saturday at the Park with Jennifer

I digress. I'm supposed to be finishing my stories of Morocco, but I can't resist putting out some creative pictures by my grandbaby, Jennifer - 11 years old...but aren't they always babies?

Yesterday's excursion with our cameras was to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The park's free range setting is appealing but still the 99 degrees tested Jennifer's blue eyed-blond haired body. Those northern Anglos don't seem to hold up as well as this brown eyed person.

Jennifer always seems to have a different view through the lens of her camera. I guess that's what a future film director needs.

Capturing the mood of a pensive stork...


Prayerful bird...


Off center catches this guy's weirdness.


A gorilla with his afternoon popcorn.


And Jennifer's favorite, a meerkat watching her from a pack of napping meerkats.

Afield in San Diego: Vallecito Stagecoach Station, Mud in Our Eyes

In a few days I'm heading for Morocco for some deserts and history, so I thought I'd write about some prequel history and desert action right here in San Diego from a couple weekends ago.


My 14 yr old granddaughter, Hayley - Jennifer's sister - and I headed out to the old Vallecito stagecoach station to throw some mud - that is, repair the adobe structure by smearing on a layer of mud. Great fun if you're six years old and you're not in the sun-beating-down desert.

To set the "stage" so to speak, we drove the 80 miles east from the coast so we could approach the work site from the Great Southern Overland Stagecoach route, the same route the stagecoach travelers would have traveled from Missouri. The only other option for them was the northern route over what became known as Donner Pass. Either way had to have been a grueling trip. We drove through the Coyote and Jacumba Mountains, past the Well of Eight Echos and Corrizo Badlands and some of the most spectacular scenery in San Diego - that most tourists don't see. We were in a bit of a hurry to start working before the temperatures rose, but I had to take at least one cactus shot, and made a note to come back this way more leisurely.


The station was run by the Lassater family who settled here in the 1850's; they provided respite and meals to the passengers of the Butterfield Overland Stage coaches, which passed through twice weekly. By the late 1880s, the train route had come through from the east and stagecoaches were lost to history. Even before the stagecoach, though, the route was used by Mexicans running cattle to the north.

Our project was organized by Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO). We got a short lesson on how to apply adobe mud and then we were on our own.


We began by making our mud. Let me say here, this endeavor is not as easy as it sounds. The mud has to be the right consistency...


the wall needs to be prepped by removing loose dirt and wetting the wall just the right amount for the new mud to adhere.


Then on with the mud, any way you can get it to go. We tried throwing, smearing, patting, talking to it...


and somehow we got a pretty nice wall done.


One 14 year old, pretty proud of herself after a hard day's work.


I took the requisite door photo,


and we were both happy campers heading home, with thoughts of how isolated life was for this family and how welcome must have been those stagecoach travelers.

Click here for a photo of the stagecoach station in 1904, likely much the same as it looked in the 1850's.