21-SAN DIEGO, Part 1

Our theme for this trip was, “You Can’t Go Back but We are Going to Try!” The last few posts have not fallen into that category because our adventures in New Mexico and Arizona have been new ones.


Let me pause this story and give you a bit of background.


I had lived almost all my life in Kansas, never having driven more than about 60 miles away from home by myself.

Now, in September, 1984, at 42 years old I found my world and my 24-year marriage crumbling around my shoulders. My 16 year-old daughter, Darcy, and I decided to move to San Diego and start over there. This was a place that we knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about except that I had heard the weather was really nice there, unlike Kansas. Basically, I was scared to death.

A dear friend, Linda Smith, volunteered to drive with Darcy and I to the Land of the Unknown to make sure we got there in one piece.  After I safely secured an apartment, she flew back to Kansas. I will be eternally grateful to Linda for that gift of caring for us.

Now, after leaving Yuma, Don and I were driving the I-8 toward San Diego. About 80 miles east of San Diego, I began to re-live the first time I had driven on this road.

The trip Linda and I made was laced with adventures and it was on this stretch of highway that I reminisced about one of them.

Linda and I were very excited to almost be in San Diego where we would be seeing the ocean for the first time. In our excitement, we forgot to get gas in the car.

It was about 5pm when suddenly we saw the gas gauge sitting on Empty!

Now the highway was climbing through some mountains that were made of huge piles of rock and (we were sure) heavily laced with rattlesnakes. We were imagining having to sleep in the car on the narrow highway shoulder with snakes crawling up the side of the car and climbing in the windows. Trust me, we were praying…hard.

Finally, around a curve, we saw a sign for gas and we pulled in, running on fumes. The station was off the road and behind a large outcropping of rock that could not be seen from the highway.

The guy who ran the station approached us looking for all the world like a chain-saw murderer. Now the snakes were looking more friendly to us than he did. He filled our tank with gas that was about double what we had paid anywhere else on the trip. We didn’t care. I asked him how far it was to the next gas station. He said 80 miles.

We thanked God for the gas and keeping us safe from snakes and super creepy guys and drove back onto the highway. Just over the hill we saw another gas station…with gas at the normal price! “Eighty miles?” Right!!

Linda and I took turns laughing and crying off and on this whole trip. Usually it was me crying and Linda laughing like crazy which somehow kept me sane and in one piece. This was one of those times.

We spent that night in a sleazy motel in El Cajon (an east suburb of San Diego) because we wanted to see San Diego for the first time with a sunny blue sky for a background.


Our destination was Poway, a little town just north of San Diego. (Darcy had a horse that I would eventually have shipped out, and I was told that Poway was a horse-friendly town.) The map said the shortest way to get there was to take highway 67 north from near El Cajon. It seemed safer than taking the I-15 FREEWAY. The word, “freeway,” itself was scary to two little gals from Kansas. We didn’t know highway 67 would be even scarier!

Highway 67 was rather rural (by California standards) and wound up hill.

Once again we are seeing mountains and rocks.

Then we turned west and were remind that “what goes up must come down.”  This road is a narrow, two-lane highway that CURVES DOWNHILL…

…with a steep cliff that goes STRAIGHT DOWN from the edge of the road.

We can see the town of Poway in the distance…DOWN IN THE DISTANCE!!!

Have I mentioned that we don’t have terrain like this in Kansas? I am driving a little1980 Datsun with a luggage carrier on top. This car is packed solid with everything I own and furthermore, it has Kansas tags on it. 


None of this is missed by the other cars that are stacked up behind us and fuming because we are creeping down this two mile long hill at about 10 miles and hour, hugging the yellow line and scared to death that we will fall off the edge of the cliff. We were white knuckling it all the way!!

When we finally got to the bottom of the hill, we looked to the right. See the nice home with the red roof in the lower left? Well now look to the top of the hill right above it. See that HUGE boulder? What would be your first thought when there was an earthquake?? Mine, too. (By the way, it is WHEN there is an earthquake, not IF!)

Linda and I have laughed about this incident many times over the years. Interestingly enough, I just heard from Linda (still in Topeka) by e-mail this past week. Again, she mentioned our trip and how God took cared of us. It was the trip of a lifetime for both of us on more levels than you can imagine.

If it had not been for Linda and my crazy trip, I would have never met Don and would not be writing this blog.


So now back to Don and I. We are finally back in San Diego and we are definitely “Going Back”! There are so many memories here.

Darcy and I moved into this apartment building in Poway.

Don lived in this house about four miles away…

We met and were married in this church in Escondido in 1985 (didn’t let any grass grow under our feet!)  Then we both lived in Don’s house in Poway for the next 10 years.

Part of this trip involves sad memories as we visited the cemetery in Poway where both my daughter, Darcy and Don’s daughter, Shannon, are buried, just two graves apart. Darcy died on September 11, 1990 and Shannon on December 20, 1991.

This is always a painful visit but since we now live in Oregon, we have not been here in many years. I have another daughter buried in Topeka who passed away in 1966. The good thing is that we know they are not here. They are all waiting for us in heaven.

Next we visit Julian, a small mountain town near San Diego and other activities in and around this area. I am loving the weather here and Don is complaining that it is too hot. (It’s NOT!)