Traveling to the Rose Parade

---

Looking at the opportunities to see the sights in this “jewel by the sea” we noticed that the Holiday Bowl Parade was Thursday morning. So, after making up a Rotary meeting at a wonderfully vibrant breakfast club in the Hillcrest area, I took the public tram down to the Holiday Bowl Balloon Parade and enjoyed the bands and cheering fans of the UCLA Bruins and Baylor Bears. Meanwhile Mary was housekeeping in the rig and doing the wash. That afternoon we visited two National Wildlife Refuges at the south end of San Diego Bay (just north of the Mexico border) to add stamps to my NWR Passport Book, meeting wonderful folks along the way, and visited the Navy Base to restock supplies. Our evening was spent with the Holiday Bowl on TV after learning that the evening temps in QualCom Stadium were cold, adding to the chill of spending multihundreds of dollars for tickets and parking. So we left game attendance to the diehard fans. We enjoyed the Trolly Tour yesterday with its quaint notes on San Diego history after a Mexican lunch in Old Town. Friday was a rainless day, starting out chilly, just right for our planned visit to the San Diego Safari Zoo, 30+ miles north of town. Although it is well advertized and praised by the Zoo proper it was a disappointment. It's as if Disney had created a zoo with all the commercialization of a theme park. We saw the same animals but fewer of them in more space and everywhere was an opportunity to spend more money. Although it's a larger park it has fewer riding opportunities to get around the hills and valleys.

Saturday morning we closed up the rig, hooked up the car and headed north to LA. As we got closer to our destination in Pomona the traffic and rain got heavier, as if to introduce us to this mecca of humanity. We arrived safely and got acquainted with our caravan team mates, getting together for dinner and briefing on our visit to the Roses. Our new, bright red jackets warded off the wet chill and the fellowship of old and new friends led to great expectations for the coming week. The weather forecast is for sunny days from Monday on and we can always turn to the TV if we want to see rain or snow in the rest of the country.

---