We started the day by meeting a group of friends for breakfast at Marie Calendar’s in Carlsbad. Good food, good service, good friends… hard to beat that.After breakfast we all hung out in the parking lot for awhile longer and visited.
Cheryl and I had brought our bicycles so after visiting we excused ourselves and headed toward the beach. The coastline in Carlsbad is beatiful but when we got to Oceanside we found what we were looking for… a bike path next to the sand.
We parked about in the middle of “The Strand” and rode from there North to the end of the path. Then on the way back we stopped at the Oceanside Pier and parked our bikes and strolled out to the end of the pier. On the way back up the pier we ran into a group of our friends that we had left in the parking lot at Marie Calendars. I guess great minds think alike.
When we got back to our bicycles we rode South to the other end of The Strand and were reminded about a book a we bought for the kids years ago from Shel Silverstein called “Where the Sidewalk Ends”
When we got back to our truck and loaded the bikes we decided not to take the freeway home but to just drive up the coast. Not being all that familiar with the area I just headed North figuring I couldn’t be that far off. There was a bus ahead of us so I just decide to follow it. Soon it came to a fork in the road. The bus went straight and so did I… for about 100 yards until we got to the Del Mar Gate of the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. They let the bus go through but they made us turn around.
We went back to the fork in the road and took the other path which led us to another fork in the road… made the wrong turn there too and ended up heading South. How hard can it be to drive North up the coast?
Went back to the second fork and took the other leg that went under the freeway. The sign said it led to the Interstate 5 North but I soon saw that I didn’t have to actually get on the freeway if I went straight so I did that… for about 100 yards then I was at another gate entering Camp Pendleton… looks like I’d have to take the freeway after all.
As we traveled up the 5 Cheryl mentioned she would like to stop at the mission in San Juan Capistrano. I had never been there before but she used to visit there with her mom. It’s a great place to visit. In addition to all the history and displays they have the most beautiful gardens. Flowers and trees are planted everywhere and they display the names of them so Cheryl was able to make a list of the ones she wanted to plant.
After visiting the mission we headed home. All in all it was a great day.
