day85

Day 85 (November 13, 2006) - LA, CA

We don't know what to do today, so we take it easy for a while, spending some time on the beach before checking out from the campground. On one hand we need to fix the Vespa and there's a service center 40 miles back which carries the spare part we "think" will fix the problem. We are hopeful that also the store in San Diego will have the same part, so we head south. We hastily punched in the directions in TomTom and instead of keeping us along the coast it brought us on a really ugly and busy freeway that cuts LA in half to Irvine, at the beginning of Orange County - or "The O.C." for the TV-crowd. We steer to the coast in San Clemente, which is a very cute little town, and then continue south towards San Diego. The beaches along the way are populated with surfers dressed in tight neoprene wetsuits. It's not a figment of my imagination. The image of the blonde Californian surfer kid with wide shoulder and a tight six-pack is not so far-fetched. I have seen them with my own eyes today - many of them!

Around Carlsbad we take a look at the campground offerings in San Diego and, for reasons that I am not willing to divulge, decide for an alternate route. We are driving inland to the desert towards Joshua Tree National Park. We arrive in Hemet in the evening.

Seagulls.

The beach in Encinitas, just north of San Diego.

Same beach.

Surfer.