You have to love the climate here in San Diego. Although the daily highs were on the cooler side for the tail-end of last week, we still had highs in the mid to upper 60s. The weekend was fabulous with the thermometer hitting the mid 70s and we had a high of 83 degrees yesterday. Since we’re located right on Mission Bay, we have a cool, refreshing breeze off the water most of the time.

Mesa, Arizona is heating up at this time of year. If we were still there, I’m sure we’d have the air conditioners running all day. One thing about Arizona though, you can’t beat the sunsets. The dust in the desert air makes spectacular, fiery sunsets at times. Here in San Diego, we often have beautiful sunsets on the bay or over the ocean.

Thursday evening, Donna and I took a stroll around Mission Bay RV Resort and I snapped a photo of the sunset. It wasn’t the fiery, colorful display of most sunsets. What was striking about it to me was the blue hue of the sky and water. Also, notice how the sunset is to the northwest of the park. When we’re here in the fall, the sunset is west-southwest.

On Saturday morning, I took Donna to her sister’s place on the Spyder. It was a short ride, one exit up on I-5 to La Jolla Parkway which becomes Torrey Pines Road. The traffic was backed up for a couple of miles. It turned out there was construction on Torrey Pines Road that only allowed a single lane of traffic through.

Nowadays, most of us understand that the pronunciation of many words around here that are derived from Spanish. For example, La Jolla is pronounced La Hoy-ya. It’s the Spanish double-L thing, like the word tortilla. Back in the 1960s, many people who visited San Diego didn’t know this. At the time, my step-dad, Ken, worked for the city of San Diego as an electrician and he drove a marked city-owned truck. People would see he was a local and often asked him how to get to La Jal-lah. He would deadpan, “Never heard of it!”

After dropping Donna off, I decided to avoid Torrey Pines Road and took an alternate route over the top of Mt. Soledad. It was a fairly clear day so I had to stop at the monument at the top of Soledad. I’ve posted pictures of the view from there before, but here are a few more.

Today we’re busy packing and making final decisions on what we’ll need to take with us to Belize. Donna made arrangements for Willie, the guy that runs the snack shack here at Mission Bay RV Resort, to feed and take care of Ozark the cat. He’ll come to the coach daily for the week we’re gone. Our flight is scheduled for 9:40pm tonight and I haven’t packed anything yet. I made a run to the bank yesterday and withdrew a pile of cash – they like American dollars in Belize. This will be the first time both of us are away from the coach at the same time.

For our last home-cooked dinner before we leave, Donna kept it simple last night. She grilled chicken and a medley of peppers, onions and corn with sweet potato mash on the side.

I won’t need to pack much for Belize. The forecast calls for daily highs in the mid to upper 80s and overnight lows in the upper 70s. Shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops are the uniform of the day in this tropical country. I’ll be packing light.

We’re planning to stay off the grid most of the time while we’re down there. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories to tell and photos to share once we return next week.