Inspiring travel stories, tips, and guides from a couple exploring the world one destination at a time.
Last Updated: June 6, 2026
From Palm Springs, California we headed south to Jacumba Hot Springs, a small desert community perched at nearly 3,000 feet along the US-Mexico border in San Diego County. The landscape is unlike anything else in Southern California — massive eroded granite boulders scattered across the mountains, wide open desert sky, and a haunting quiet that comes from a place the rest of the world seems to have left behind.
Last Updated: June 6, 2026
From Las Vegas, Nevada we made our way south and west to Palm Springs, California, stopping along the way at Lake Havasu City, Arizona. The drive through the Mojave Desert is one of our favorites — wide open skies, vast desert vistas, and the feeling that the American Southwest always has something remarkable around the next bend.
Last Updated: May 2026
We still had a property in San Diego that we had rented the past couple of years. Our tenants moved out, giving us a great opportunity to make renovations and put it on the market. We changed our travel plans and based ourselves in Escondido — the closest RV park to the house in Rancho Santa Fe. Southern California is an amazing place and it was wonderful to be back after a two-year hiatus. Great year-round weather without mosquitoes, black flies, tornadoes, hail, or hurricanes — just fires and earthquakes. It’s easy to see why so many people live here and pay the insane cost of living.
Last Updated: July 2017
We interrupted our New England summer travels when Michael needed to fly back to San Diego for a week to manage his physician practice. It turned out to be a welcome reset — and a reminder of how much there is to do in a city we know well. Downtown San Diego has transformed steadily over the years, and with Comic-Con and Pride Week both kicking off during our visit, the streets had an unusually electric energy. San Diego is the eighth largest city in the United States, its economy anchored by military and defense as much as tourism, and its enduring appeal built on miles of sandy coastline and one of the most reliably mild climates in the country.
[Read more…] about Downtown San Diego: Gaslamp Quarter, USS Midway, Comic-Con & La Playa
Last Updated: May 2026
Twenty-five years. Seven homes spread across San Diego County — downtown, the beach, a golf course community, and finally rural Rancho Santa Fe, where we grew Zinfandel grapes and made wine in the backyard for a decade. We loved all of it. And in January 2017, we sold or gave away almost everything we owned, staged the house, and drove east toward Florida to start a life we’d been thinking about for years. This is where the blog really begins.
