Mississippi River Trip: Hippie Beach

We drove straight to the beach without considering where we'd camp or what else we'd do.  After so many dry, hot days an ocean of water and a cool breeze was the only thing we had on our minds.  

We wound up at "Ocean Beach", which we immediately renamed "Hippie Beach" after seeing the denizens.   10 seconds after getting out of the car an obviously stoned girl came up to me, offering to buy a cigarette for a dollar.  For a buck I was willing to part with two, so I handed them over and took the paper in return.  The paper turned out to be a little paper bag filled with pot inside.  I guess California is on the barter system now, what with all the budget problems.  I tossed the packet and lamented my loss of cigarettes.

The water was cool and the day beautiful, so we walked down the beach to the pier, then walked the pier to see how the fishermen were doing, and finally back to the car.  Then we hit a Mickey D's for the internet to find a place to stay.  It looked like we picked a bad time - Comic Con was in town and all of the hotels were packed, as were the campgrounds.  We decided to head out of town to the Viejas Indian Reservation to camp.  It was a tad pricy for what we got, but we were virtually alone in the pasture, which was what we really needed - we don't camp well with others.  We decided to spend two nights there, then three in San Diego at a hotel that we were able to make reservations at.

The next morning we lazed around a bit and explored the reservation - not much to see other than a casino and outlet mall.  We had lunch and decided to hit Julian, CA for the afternoon so that we could see a few sights and get our hands on the famous Julian Apple Pie.  The trip took us along a winding road through a state park (the name escapes me).  The park showed signs of recent fire, and there were signs everywhere about no campfires, no smoking, no fireworks - basically no nothing!  We rode into Julian around 5PM and, after dutifully examining the main street for 30 seconds or so, went to get pie.  It's pie people, it deserves attention.

We settled in at the Julian Pie Company on Main Street.  Larisa ordered a slice of apple-berry, and I ordered a slice of the original apple pie.  Both of us got ice cream.  It's apple pie.  It deserves ice cream.  The pies were great, though both Larisa and I thought that there was too much additional sugar in the recipes.  The recipe I make at home doesn't use sugar on the apples, so maybe we're just prejudiced.  Overall, very tasty pie though, and my own recipe could come anywhere near the tender, flaky crust of the Julian Pie Company.  After pie we wandered the streets, poking our head into shops and tourist traps and photo galleries with abandon.  After a couple of hours of this we were all tuckered out and headed back to the reservation for some tea by the campfire and sleep (Viejas Reservation allowed fires, though no place else did). 

As we were sitting at the campfire we heard the drunken sounds of Spanish singing, backed up and harmonized by the howling of dogs.  A group of about 15 Hispanic men and women had set up across the pasture from us and gotten their drunk on, then broke out an accordion and guitar and started singing.  Interestingly enough, when the singing was low and the dogs had been put away, the sound was lovely to hear and restful as heck!  We drifted off to the sounds of Spanish music and awoke to discover that whoever they were, they had packed up and left well before dawn.   We packed our own stuff and went back to San Diego to celebrate Larisa's birthday.