Ortega Pass and Elsinore

Notice how I managed to ignore the blog police for over a week?  I am proud of myself.  I refrained from posting when I had nothing new to say.  Not that I really have much to say this time, but I figured I better post something or people would begin to wonder if we had gotten lost.

Actually, I have been enjoying Derek's and Daryl's blog postings of their adventures.  It is always fun to read first hand accounts of travels to new places.

Our summer has settled into a routine here in San Onofre.  There is not really much to tell that we have not already shared.  We do camp checks, work the kiosk a little when paid employees call in sick, pick up trash on the trails, and help campers whenever we can.  The weather here is about as good as it gets for summer time.  We had a couple days last week when it got up to the mid 80's, but most of the time the highs are in the mid to upper 70's with some fog that burns off by mid morning.

Tuesday we rode the scooter up to the other San Onofre State Beach campground.  It is about 5 miles north of us, on the south edge of San Clemente and inland about a mile.  There is a trail from the campground that goes to the beach, and we took it for the first time.  The round trip was about four miles and very pleasant.  Much of the trail is along San Mateo Creek which is a protected area with quite a bit of wildlife.

Today we rode the scooter to Elsinore to do some pre-cruise shopping at the outlet mall there.  We got some really good deals on shirts, pants,  and shorts for me and a fancy dress, tops, and shoes for Dianna.  Sometimes we don't find any good deals at outlet malls.  Often the prices are about the same as what you would spend at Wal-Mart.  Not this time.

Elsinore is about 50 miles from us.  We rode north to San Juan Capistrano and took Highway 74  over Ortega Pass and across the coastal mountains.  The road is twisty and it's a pretty good climb both ways.  The scooter took it in stride, of course.  I filled up when we got back to San Clemente and we got 61.3 MPG on the last tank.  My average fuel economy since purchasing the scooter is 57.3  We tend to get much lower mileage during cold weather but it is always between 59 and 62 during the summer.  We are now just a couple hundred miles short of 20,000 miles.  That is a lot of miles on a scooter!

Dianna is going to visit her parents again this weekend, and Don and Betty plan to stop by here Sunday on their way back from their visit with Mark, Heather and the boys who are staying just a few miles south of us.  Daryl stopped by one day a couple weeks ago when he was out for his visit with Devon.  It's always nice to have company.  If Donna would come visit then I would have something else to blog about.