{"id":1628,"date":"2013-06-15T07:38:50","date_gmt":"2013-06-15T12:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/?page_id=1628"},"modified":"2013-06-24T18:48:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T23:48:31","slug":"southern-california-usa","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/travel-log\/highways-byways\/southern-california-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Southern California, USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

To date I’ve only had one chance to travel to southern California.\u00a0 That came in 2001, right after the 9-1-1 attacks on the World Trade Center & Pentagon.\u00a0 I flew out only two days after that fateful day to Orange County where I landed at Santa Ana’s John Wayne International Airport.\u00a0 My friends Jeff & Rachelle Campbell had moved there for work, but were getting ready to head back to their beloved Utah.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

They invited me out for a visit and as this could very well be my only opportunity to see somewhere incredible that I’d never been, I took them up on it.\u00a0 It was a very good decision.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

After picking me up at the airport, Jeff drove me to his hometown of Fallbrook, a very cool desert town just north of San Diego.\u00a0 As my visit was pretty much last-minute he wasn’t able to take off work, but I did have free run of the house and had plenty of time to explore the area, which was a ton of fun.<\/p>\n

The house they were renting was very cool in many ways, but in particular I enjoyed Rachelle’s “smelling tour” of their yard, which had an amazing abundance of various herbs and spices.\u00a0 It was the perfect way to start off my California experience.<\/p>\n

I had a particularly good time hiking through the 46 acre Los Jilgueros Nature Preserve on a daily basis as I headed into downtown for my explorations.\u00a0 This preserve had a very nice 1.5 mile loop trail, native plant & wildflower project, ponds and wetlands.\u00a0 I spent many an hour there lounging around enjoying the sun, ocean breezes and beautiful weather.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

Fallbrook is known as the “Avocado Capital of the World” because of the numerous groves in the area.\u00a0 With a population of just over 30,500 (2010 Census) it’s a very pleasant mid-sized town.\u00a0 One interesting note; there are over 60 wholesale and retail nurseries in the area, a testament to agriculture being a primary industry.<\/p>\n

When the weekend rolled around it was time for a road trip.\u00a0 We ended up in San Diego, checking out the beachfront, Aviation Museum, Balboa Park <\/a>and other areas of interest.\u00a0 I can’t tell you how much fun it was “cruising” along the boardwalk seeing historic places I’d only seen in movies.\u00a0 We stopped at a seafood restaurant on Sunday morning and it’s there that I had the absolute best fish sandwich I’ve ever eaten.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

Our journey also took us out to the Anza-Borrego Desert State\u00a0Park <\/a>and the Mt. Palomar Observatory<\/a>, a lifelong dream of mine to see.\u00a0 We saw so many places in just a couple of days it was a dizzying blur of fun in the sun.\u00a0 As we left the mountains to return to the desert we stopped at a roadside bar called The Hog Hideout, easily identified by the large number of Harley-Davidson motorcycles lined up neatly in front.\u00a0 It was a wonderful atmosphere to cool down, have a cold one and reflect on the things we’d just seen.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

Near the end of the tour we ended up at the world-famous Julian Pie Company where we picked up one the best apple pies on Earth, no kidding.\u00a0 One interesting side note (to me anyway) was the surprise I got on one of my birthdays.\u00a0 My daughter-in-law, Rocky (Roxanna) had ordered me a Julian Apple Pie and had it shipped to me.\u00a0 It is to date one of my favorite birthday presents of all time, talk about a great and considerate gift.\u00a0 If you’d like to try one of these wonderful pies for yourself, check out their website at Julian Pie Company<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As is always the case, I really hated leaving but had to go home.\u00a0 I will forever cherish the memories of this vacation to one of the most interesting and enjoyable places I’ve ever been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To date I’ve only had one chance to travel to southern California.\u00a0 That came in 2001, right after the 9-1-1 attacks on the World Trade Center & Pentagon.\u00a0 I flew out only two days after that fateful day to Orange County where I landed at Santa Ana’s John Wayne International Airport.\u00a0 My friends Jeff & […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":44,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1628","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3CUQl-qg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1644,"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1628\/revisions\/1644"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/44"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/western-traveler.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}