McDowell Trip 2006

The McDowell Trip cross country. Enjoy our trip with us as we finally make our "Western" trip.

Name:
Location: Syracuse, New York, United States

I am an Eagle Scout having been a member of the Scouting fraternity for over 30 years man and boy. Now that I have graduated from SU I am preparing to become more active in the fall. I am a lifelong member of the Presbyterian Church and I have recently become the Presbytery Resource Person for the Theological Education Fund of the Presbyterian Church USA. As part of my college training I designed websites for both my church and the local Presbytery. I have been married for 36 years to a warm, loving, special lady named Charlotte and we have two great children, Margie and Francis, and one grandchild, Alex, who all live in the Syracuse area. Francis is getting married in October and Margie is dating a great guy named Mike.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

San Diego, CA

Hi All, I finally got smart and decided to finish out the blog with the name of the city or special place we are visiting.
We made the short run down from La Mirada in several easy short hops. We stopped at Capistrano to visit the famous Mission of San Juan Capistrano. There is a continuing effort to restore the mission to its former appearance. The photo was taken just inside the mission entrance. The sign to the left shows the various sections of the mission. The bell on the question mark shaped holder is a symbol of "El Camino Real" or the king's highway. We saw these bells all the way down US-101 and in San Diego. The king's highway connected all the missions in California and was the main North and South route through early California.

After we got to San Diego and found our motel and got settled we walked over to the "Old Town" area which is only about five blocks from our motel. While we were there I took this neat picture of Char standing next to this huge cactus growth. There were a lot of neat little shops in period buildings.

After dinner at a nearby Denny's Char did laundry again. Shortly after that we heard sirens and discovered that there was a fire about two blocks behind the motel. After that calmed down it was off to bed for the night.
This morning I took the car for a much needed oil change at a nearby service center. After that I drove back to the motel to pick Char up and we headed for the famous San Diego Zoo. After we arrived the first thing we did was take the guided bus tour. The place is so huge that this is the only way to start a visit here. When the tour was over we rode one of the express shuttles back to near the Panda exhibit. We walked to the exhibit but decided we needed to eat first. We had a good but rather expensive lunch near the exhibit. After lunch we stood in line for about fifteen minutes for a look at the pandas. There were only three on exhibit today and I took some pictures with my good SLR camera before taking the one below with the digital camera. Of course just as I took the shot the panda moved the branch in front of her face. I think that the other photos will come out better but I haven't had time to have them developed yet.

I am going to sign off now as we need to get up and moving early tomorrow. We are driving 492 miles to Williams, AZ and losing an hour on the way when we cross into Arizona. Wish us luck.

1 Comments:

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