Welcome to Our Blog!

Welcome!

We began this blog in March, 2008 at the suggestion of our friend, Jack Brandais, who was instrumental in getting us started. Thank you, Jack!

Some of Our Favorite Travel-Related Web Sites:

Jack Brandais has a great Web site focusing on the California travel scene as well as the car culture. Be sure to visit WeekendDriver for his insightful posts and articles.

Another excellent travel Web site is Bill and Nancy Bamberger's Travels with Bill and Nancy, wherein they present photo and video travel journals of their trips all over the world. They display their full range of multi-media capabilities, as can be seen by visiting Bill and Nancy Interactive, their San Diego-based Web design and multi-media company.

A rich source of road trip ideas is Huell Howser’s California's Gold Web site. Huell has been producing his series of (mostly) California videos since 1991. California's Gold’s home page organizes his video series by topic for easy browsing. Road Trip #143, State of Jefferson, inspired our riff on that topic in our Wilderville piece. Although the Web site serves as a vehicle for selling his DVDs, he has provided a link to PBS TV station KCET, Los Angeles, which has archived selected episodes for online viewing via streaming technology. When visiting this link, be sure to explore the “Popular Tags” links for additional episodes.

An up-and-coming source for San Diego County ideas is the PBS TV Station KPBS series Wonderland, narrated by native San Diegan Noah Tafolla. Each half-hour episode features (1) a community within the City of San Diego (for example Ocean Beach, Gaslamp); (2) a community elsewhere in San Diego County (for example National City, Julian); or (3) a topical subject (for example Great Italian Food, San Diego During World War II). We especially like the way he integrates historical footage and details, to provide context for the narrative. His early 2010 episode about Oceanside inspired our "staycation" trip

For fans of Japan, we came across Dr. Galen R. Frysinger's superb Web site on his travels. Check out his Japan collection to see what we mean.

We will add other favorites as we encounter them.

Here are the direct links to the travel postings we have published so far:

Chef's Holiday Yosemite (January 2008)
Anza-Borrego Desert Flower Display (March 2008, 2009)
Wilderville (April 2008)
Wilderville (May 2009)
Montana Road Trip (June 2008)
New England Cruise (September 2008)
OAT Japan 2009 (March-April 2009)
Chef's Holiday Yosemite-2009 Update (September 2009)
"Staycation" trips to Fallbrook, Valley Center, Ramona, Anza Borrego, Oceanside, Idyllwild, and Santa Fe #3751 (Steam Train) (2009-10).

Additionally, we contributed to an article on Jack's Web site about Hearst's Hacienda (Be sure to click Hearst's Hacienda in the L.A. Times in the archives).

Finally, we had to tell the world about the completion of the undergrounding project on our street, Pacifica Drive, San Diego.

We will also publish postings on other topics that are of interest to us, and it is hoped, to you.

Note: due to a recent health diagnosis, our days of extensive travel are likely over. Future postings will consist of "Staycation" daytrips as well as POSTscripts or updates of archived postings from our archives.

Suggestions for Enjoying our Blogs:

You can enlarge the photos to fill screen size by clicking them. Return to the text by using your browser's back button.

We also tried to provide additional information and insight by creating links to other Web pages. Try clicking the colored links to see what happens!

Some of our readers have suggested we find a way to format our journals so that they can be read in chronological order from oldest to newest posts instead of the reverse, which is the nature of the Web blog beast. Until we come up with something better, we have created index pages for our longest blogs, New England Islands Cruise 2008 and OAT Japan 2009.

Enjoy!

Doug & Marie