Friday started out sunny and warm here at Pio Pico, but rain is expected by the first of the week. Steve and I decided to have a look at the ocean and headed for San Diego. Steve spent a lot of his Navy days working out of San Diego so the trip wasn't without nostalgia.

We wanted to take route 75 to Coronado but it was closed due to an accident so we skirted the bay on Harbor Drive and reminisced about the Naval Station training buildings... what they were used for... how they changed... why some of them were missing. It was fun. We got to see ships coming and going. And hundreds of beautiful yachts undulating at their moorings waiting for their weekend sailors.

We got some sandwiches for lunch and ate them down by the waterfront. Then Steve said... pointing at a distant hill... "I want to go up there and see that."

"That" was Cabrillo National Monument. We found Rosecrans Road and headed up route 209 through Point Loma. My acrophobia didn't kick in until we had gone through the residential part of the peninsula and out onto the ridge road where you can see forever in almost any direction. Awesome. The Pacific Ocean was sparkling in the sunlight on the west and San Diego Bay, Coronado Island and all of San Diego was spread out on the east. Yikes! It was beautiful.

A military cemetery is on both sides of the road for a ways with hundreds and hundreds of headstones. It certainly gets one to thinking how many people die in wars. And this is just a small portion of the actual number.

A road on the west side takes you down to sea level with ocean view points and tidepools to investigate when the tide is out. That area is part of the Cabrillo National Monument.

On the other side of the hill is a Visitor< Center and the statue of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo... the first European to set foot on the west coast of what is now the United States. There are walkways to the old lighthouse, to a whale viewing point and to a collection of military equipment and gear as well as several places where you can soak in the vast view of the bay and city. We watched small pleasure boats, fishing boats, tugboats and big naval ships coming and going and we looked down on helocopters. We even got to see a submarine enter the bay from the ocean.

The visitors center is filled with great books about the area, nature, history and more. There is a place if you want to take a picnic.

If you get to San Diego area and want to see it all at a glance that is the place to go. And if you have a Golden Eagle pass, it is a national monument so it will cost nothing to enter the grounds.