Tails of the Travelin' Trio: Midway

(San Diego, CA) Mike has a number of museums in the area that he'd like to visit. Since we had a big outing yesterday we figured the dogs could stand to rest a bit today. So before he headed out we decided to take a walk.

The park we're staying at now is called Sweetwater Summit Campground at Sweetwater Regional Park. Being a country park it's different than an RV park. I'm finding there is a whole segment of the population I didn't really know existed. While there are some RV's here (most of them very old), there are a lot of tents and vans. These people are just one step above homeless. There are old guys as well as complete families with babies, young kids, and dogs. This one guy lives in his truck. The front seat is a bench type seat. He puts his blankets and pillow on the front seat, hooks into the electricity and watches a color tv he has sitting on the dashboard. He cooks on the barbeque pit there is at each site and eats at the large picnic table at his site. I'm not sure what all these people do some of the time as you're only allowed to stay here 21 of every 28 days.

This park seems to have been made for horses as there are a lot of trails and there are places to tie your horses up all around the campsites. Fortunately, we've only seen two horses here. Three of our dogs totally ignore horses but Slugger barks at them which spooks some horses so we try keep him away from horses.

Before Mike left for his museum trip we took the dogs for a hike on one of the trails in the park. Unfortunately the dogs have to stay on leash but at least there was a nice place to walk.

As we approached the side of the hill we came across a field of pretty flowers.

It may look like we're out in the middle of nowhere but that is hardly the case. There is a large freeway interchange just over the hill.

It's not good news when we hike somewhere that overlooks a road. While the three big dogs understand cars, little Boogie absolutely doesn't get it. He sees the cars in the distance and he's sure they are little critters running around. Calling does no good, pulling on the leash does no good. The only way to get him to stop watching the cars is to pick him up and carry him to a spot where he can no longer see the cars.

Finally we were able to continue on the walk after carrying Boogie a ways. On the other side of the hill we could see just a glimpse of the Sweetwater Reservoir.

As we got closer we could see the whole thing was fenced off.

Too bad as it looks like a great place for the dogs to play. It is only opened on weekends and just for fishermen.

The trails around here all have names. But I'm a little suspicious of the names. The hill we walked up was called Cardiac Hill Trail. The trail went around the hill not straight up the trail. Even if you did go straight up, it wasn't that steep. Whoever named this trail must have been really out of shape!

After depositing the crew back at the RV, I (Mike) went downtown San Diego to tour the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that is on permanent display as a museum.

The drive along Harbor Boulevard up to downtown was very interesting because it went past lots of Navy ships in port, and then past the baseball stadium, convention center and historic old downtown. It was busy around the carrier museum because there is a park, a waterfront trail and lots of tourist stuff in the area (like Seattle but prettier), but I still found free on street parking just a few blocks away.

The carrier was very well set up for touring. They give you an IPod type thing at the entrance and at numbered stops throughout the ship tour you just pressed the number and listened to the explanation for that area. There were also lost of good signs and displays, as well as numerous docents, retired navy guys, who gave little talks or answered questions.

The Midway was finished in 1945 and expanded several times over the years, and for a long time it was the biggest warship afloat. It did lots of service during the Vietnam War – Midway fighters made the first MIG kill of the war - and finished its career as the Navy’s flagship in the Persian Gulf during the first Iraq war in 1992.

The tour took you through all parts of the ship – and it has lots of parts! It is amazing what a complex machine we are willing to build and support in order to drop bombs on people on the other side of the world.

Here are some of the parts of the ship (no particular order):