Google nexus

We finally got a smart phone, only 5 years after everybody else. Waiting had it's perks though. Google just released a new nexus phone - their line of unlocked high end the phones with high end Prices. Except this time around the price was decidedly middle end.

Just 299 gets you a 4.7 inch display, 4 core CPU and 4g support. I'm typing this on the nexus 4 right now and it's a joy to use. Jymm says it's super cute too. No question this is a high end smartphone.

So far it's not cheaper than most phones at 299 but the next step is the monthly plan. T-Mobile has a no contract (prepaid) plan for 30 that gives you 5gb of data at 4g speeds and just 100 minutes of talk. Combine that with a good VoIP plan and you have all the minutes you want and data too for almost the lowest monthly payment you can find for a non-data plan.

If you have a regular monthly contract that kind of deal would cost around 80 a month. So in one year you pay 960 just in monthly fees, plus some amount for the phone. With our setup you pay 360 for monthly fees and 300 for the nexus 4.  660 is less than 960 by a good margin and next year your cost is just 360, which is even better!

Prepaid no-contract is the future of phones, in San Diego and the rest of the country.

Palomar Mountain hiking and camping info

A little piece of the east coast (trees, shade, water, snow!) right here in San Diego. A real nice change of pace for locals, with camping and hiking opportunities. The trees here are surprisingly fat (esp, in the state park) and gnarled, which make for great photo ops and climbing.

There are three campgrounds, one in the state park, and two in the national forest.

Palomar Mountain State Park - campground, and most of the trails on the mountain.

Observatory campground - National forest, slightly cheaper than state park. Some of the spots are nicely nested in the trees, and some are out in the wide open, so be sure to book the type you want. Pay showers and flush toilets (free). A short trail leads to Fry Creek Campground.
There is also a trail to the observatory.

Fry Creek  - National forest campground, slightly cheaper than state park. Lots of good tree cover. The Fry creek trail leads to the state park, after a fashion.  About halfway along there is a bunch of unmarked roads (take the one going down hill), and then there is an unmarked trail just after a hairpin turn in the road. The unmarked trail is really hard to find, and somewhat hard to follow (there are plastic ribbons tied to the trees that help).  Watch for the poison oak along the trail. A GPS or at least a compass and a sense of direction is required! The trail is probably possible to find on a really old map of the state park, as it was official at one point and time, and just isn't maintained any longer.

Other info:

Current weather - conditions on the mountain tend to be a little cooler than the rest of San Diego, due to the elevation, but not much! Also, it does rain here, so it's worth checking before you go. 

Trail map inside the state park.

 Nate Henderson Grade road - hikable dirt road up the mountain - partially in the trees.
The Palomar Observatory is open 9 to 4.

Buying a home in san diego: useful websites, background info, etc

We are planning to buy (a cheap, of course) home in San Diego. Here are some things I've found out in the process which might help others. Not exactly our usual topic, but certainly San Diego relevant.

My favorite website for looking at listings is sdlookup.com. They pull together more info than most websites, all on one page, which makes it very easy to browse, as compared to say, http://www.trulia.com/, though trulia is better about letting you limit the houses shown to you by price, etc.

But in the end I used Redfin.com, because they made the whole process point and click, from scheduling a tour of a home to making a bid. SDlookup is slightly nicer to use for just browsing, but Redfin wins hands down in the event that you want to actually buy a house.

In fact, we used Redfin as our agent, and were very pleased. Here is a review I wrote for another website about my experience:

Being a first time home-buyer I didn't know what to expect from our agent, but Tamara and team provided everything we wanted in terms of help, advice, and information through this long process. There were huge headaches in this deal, but 0% of them were due to redfin as far as I can tell. If anything, I wish I had listened more to Tamara, esp. with respect to the loan company, as the one I selected on my own was really, really horrible. Some of the things I really liked: fast responses to my emails; everything was signed electronically so I never had to make any special trips just to sign yet another document; the refund. The only thing I really wished I could have gotten more help with was deciding on the bid price we put on the house. Obviously, that's going to involve a lot of guess work, no matter how much help you get, but I felt like I had to come up with that more or less on my own. I never met Tamara in person, but I never had trouble getting her on the phone, and she always made time to talk to me or the selling agent on my behalf, so I really don't mind that at all. I would recommend using Redfin over a traditional agent to anybody buying a house, esp. if you are web 2.0 savvy.

Fun on free Tuesday (Balboa park)

Balboa park is a great place to walk around, but the real attraction for most folks is the zoo and many museums. As far as we know there's no way to get into the zoo for free (legally). But every Tuesday, a subset of the park museums are open to San Diego residents, on a rotating basis. See here a list of which museums will be free next. Unfortunately for non-SanDiegans, almost all museums require a photo ID (with address) to prove you really are local (local college IDs also count). 

We like to visit all the free museums when we go, but there are some which we are more enthusiastic about. Alan's favorite is the San Diego Museum of Art, followed closely by the Museum of Photographic Arts. Both have traveling exhibits with some frequency, so there is reason to visit multiple times a year. When you visit the SDMA, be sure to check out the humming bird exhibit, which can be seen halfway up the main stairs opposite the entrance. You'll need to look out the window, as the birds in question are live and wild. Actually, you can check them out any day of the week if you walk around the back of the building, (slowly).

Jymm especially likes the Mingei International Museum. This museum features folk artists from around the world who work in various mediums. The art featured there is always interesting and colorful, and there is the added interest of having to decide which benches are for sitting and which are for looking at! Second on her list is the museum of photographic arts -- oops, Alan already claimed that one... I mean the Museum of San Diego History, although this one might only appeal to those with an interest in history in general. There is one room that is set up to resemble an old school department store which is particularly cool. Her favorite part of the history museum is actually available for anyone to look at- there is a mural of the history of Balboa Park itself on the wall outside of the museum entrance (near the bathrooms). Keep an eye out for the picture of Queen Zorine being kidnapped by a robot.

Other notable museums include:

• Reuben H. Fleet Science Center- where you can get a preview of what you would see if you went to the Exploratorium in San Fran
• The Air and Space Museum - where they've mounted and stuffed all of your favorite birds of a (metal) feather.
• The Natural History Museum - where science becomes art. Also, be sure to check out the giant fig tree outside the entrance.
• The Automotive Museum - more fun than you'd think.

Lake Hodges/ San Dieguito River Park

Mere inches from I-15 there is a surprisingly isolated hiking area. There are a couple trails in this area; we hiked the North shore trail. Though it's officially 14 miles long, a significant part is closed, and at present we think it's only 4 miles.

The trailhead is in a large recreation area with bathrooms and picnic tables. The first 5 minutes of the trail parallels a road, without much shoulder to walk on, but the pleasantness of the remaining walk makes it worthwhile.

After a five minute walk you come upon the most exciting feature of this hike, which is the bridge pictured here. It is a concrete suspension bridge open to pedestrians and bikers only. The view from the bridge is quite beautiful, though when we were there a stiff wind blew. Tie your hats and small children down tight!

The rest of the trail is a bit more pedestrian, but scenic in it's own stark, barren kind of way, with long vistas.The foliage is typical of San Diego, with lots of brush and not many trees. We were there right after a rain, which meant there were lots of pretty wildflowers. Your results will vary.

As soon as you get out of sight of the highway, the hike feels surprisingly isolated, with only the occasional house perched atop the hills. For the misanthropic among us, this is a great trail- we saw only a few people in the couple of hours we were hiking there.

Most of the trail was very flat, with the occasional steep spot. Don't take a wheelchair here, but pretty much any ambulator could do it.

Shade index: 1%.

Bathroom index: two actual bathrooms in the first half mile, nothing but scrub from thereon.

Trail info and map.

Busy Bee's Bagel & Bakery‎ in La Jolla

Their prices are about the same as Einstein's, but they don't even measure up to that lackluster standard in terms of taste. Their bagels taste like bread that's been shaped to look like a bagel. Not any better than what you could get at the freezer section in the grocery store. Heck, even Von's bakery tastes better than these!

Summary: Typical prices for a bakery, typical taste from the freezer.

Location: 6861 La Jolla Boulevard, La Jolla, CA 92037-6137

Lake Murray

San Diego is so dry (except for the beaches, I guess). The nice thing about Lake Murray is that it is just so wet. The 3.2 mile (one way) long paved path meanders around the lake, never getting further than about 10-50 feet from the water's edge, and is a pleasant respite from the parched almost desert hiking paths that cover most of San Diego. That said, it is interesting to see how little distance you need to go from the edge of the lake for the desert landscape to reappear (~25 feet).

The trail is one of the most popular we have ever seen in San Diego - except maybe for the beach on a nice weekend. If you want to escape humanity, go somewhere else! There's so much traffic (foot and bike both) that they have signs telling you to keep right, pass left. There are a few nice picnic tables and benches to stop and rest at, and a few nice views of the lake framed by the trees that dot the very edge of the lake (but unfortunately do not provide much shade). The trail also offers some interesting bird watching opportunities- Jymm recently got a camera with a10X zoom lens, so she welcomes any opportunity to take advantage of it and birds are the perfect subject.

The trail also has bathroom opportunities in the form of chemical toilets- stinky and dirty, but they get the job done in an emergency. Bring your own TP.

All in all, this wasn't one of our favorites. It was too crowded, not really scenic enough, and the walk was out-and-back rather than a loop, which makes the second half of the hike totally a deja-vu experience. Being near a large body of fresh-water is kind a of nice change of pace though.

Shade index: 10%

Official website.
Google map.

Addendum: We revisited this park one evening and found that it was much less busy. Not having to dodge people all the time made it a much more pleasant experience. The water is also pretty after dark, if you like sparkling lights.

Fry's Electronics

Strictly speaking, Fry's is not exclusive to San Diego but we decided to include it because it is a fun time. If you are into electronics in any way, shape, or form then a good time can be had wandering around this technological "mecha". We like to go and pay a visit to all of the cool gadgets we wish we owned, and while we're there we usually find one or two little things to temporarily assuage our techie cravings.

Fry's has something for all levels of geek. For the hard-core, they have a huge range of computer components, and even a pretty good selection of oscilloscopes. For those who's computer lust only runs skin deep they have a wall of LCD monitors and more DVDs than any person should own. And they also sell toaster ovens. Yes, they have quite a wide range of products at Fry's, and generally a very good selection, though there are notable exceptions (MP3 players and earbuds).

In short, Fry's can be a fun rainy afternoon activity, or a place to go when you need stuff! Bathroom index: excellent. Shade: 100%.

Torrey Pines Extension

If you've hiked in San Diego before, you've probably heard of Torrey Pines state park, located on the cliffs between La Jolla and Del Mar. Turns out Torrey Pines has a sister! While it is true that the Torrey Pines extension is far less showy than her more famous relative, the park is just as beautiful in its own quiet way. The extension is further inland, and it's much more secluded. Mostly nestled in between gently sloping canyon walls, its filled with lots of short, meandering trails that you could spend a couple hours exploring leisurely, though if your only goal was to get from one side to the other you could cross the entire park in about 15 minutes.

The landscape is gently hilly, with lots of scrub and open spaces, as in the picture above. Unlike the main Torrey Pines park, there are some areas of shade, due to the occasional tall tree or secluded canyonlet. These are pretty few and far between, however, with about 5% of the trail covered by shade (10 percent in the morning or evening from shadows cast from the canyon walls). You won't have a hard time finding a shady place to stop and rest. From some of the higher vantage points you get nice views of the surrounding areas, including the Pacific, and the other half of Torrey Pines park. One downside is that a few short sections of the trails are closed, presumably due to erosion, which is a shame in a park with so little acreage to begin with. Maybe if California weren't bankrupt the state parks might be able to afford better maintenance.

There is lots of parking near the south entrance of the park, but little else - such as rest rooms, or signage. In fact, there are maybe 3 trail markers in the entire park. On the other hand, since each trail is short, and the whole park is pretty small, there's no risk of getting lost for long. The scrub is high enough that a portable toilet could be fashioned in a pinch (you didn't hear it here!) .

This is the official map, and a google map to the entrance. Below is our map, with parking marked with the (P). Note at the top of the map is a green *, showing the entrance to the Crest Canyon open space park, which will save for another time.

Coast Walk (San Diego- La Jolla Underwater Park)

If you are looking for a leisurely stroll along the coast, this is the perfect trail to take. We discovered it quite by accident on our way to La Jolla Cove. Out and back is a half mile, and the climbing is fairly moderate. The trail follows the edge of the cliffs and offers a stunning view of the pacific ocean. The seal colony that haunts La Jolla seems to like to rest on the rocks below the cliffs, so there is a pretty good chance of seeing (and smelling!) the seals at play. 

On the map the trail is the topmost white line along the shore, with the west-most entrance marked by a yellow star. There is parking available (if you follow Coast Blvd past the yellow star), but it tends to fill up in the evenings and on weekends, so you may have to park some distance away. We have found that if you are willing to walk five or ten minutes there is plenty of parking on the side streets once you get away from the beach. 

You'll find the entrance next to a little gift shop that advertises entrance to a cave (for a fee). There is a little platform there next to the trail that will let you look down on where the seals tend to rest. There is also an entrance at the other end of the trail, but there is no parking on that part of Torrey Pines Rd. 

Sipz Vegetarian "Fuzion" Cafe

I love meat. Some people don't, and yet I have the desire to eat out with them. What to do? Sipz solves that problem with delicious vegetarian Asian fusion. While their faux chicken doesn't taste anything like chicken, I actually find it an enjoyable alternative. It also has the attractive feature of being affordably priced, with lunch priced at $8 and dinner at $9. For those of us living "on the cheap", a good restaurant can be hard to find in San Diego, and Sipz fits the bill quite nicely. 

Some dishes we would recommend:

• Jymm likes the Spicy Thai Fried Rice with "chicken". It's sweet and garlicky, although it wasn't necessarily all that spicy. (You can ask for whatever spicy level you want; 2 on scale of 10 is really very mild).
  
• Alan loves the Spicy basil bowl; it's ingredients speak for themselves: "Stir fried with snowpeaz, baby corn, baby bok choy, straw mushroomz, celery, and carrotz in a light basil sauce, with your choice of "chicken", tofu, or all vegetables. " The best part are the snowpeaz, which are really quite better than your standard snowpeas.
  
• Our friend (who shall not be named, because he is imaginary) likes the wok fried drunken noodles with "beef". Since neither of us have had this one, we consulted the menu to learn more: "big flat rice noodlez wok fried with carrotz, bean sproutz, celery, onion, bamboo shootz, and baby corn." He really liked the sauce. 
  

They have a huge menu; those three items are probably just 4% of the total options for entrees, and there are sides and deserts, etc. Of particular note is their wide range of Asian drinks (Sipz started out as a boba shop, though they don't have much boba now).

One of the reasons I like Sipz is that the food celebrates the glory that is vegetarian cooking, rather than trying to poorly imitate meat based dishes. That means lots of vegetables in each dish, and no dish has exactly same set of vegetables.  It's not at all like eating Tofurkey. For instance, their "chicken" doesn't really taste like chicken at all, but it does taste really good.

Location (google maps)

Sipz has opened a second location, called "Sipz Express", but we haven't tried it yet. It might be good too, but one has to worry a little that the freshness might suffer, since it's in a mall food court...

The "World Famous" San Diego Zoo

The steep admission price might seem like it disqualifies the San Diego Zoo from a blog about cheap things to do, but a student membership is a great way to enjoy this amazing park, and it's quite affordable too! As of 2008, 42.oo could get you a year-long pass to the zoo, and the Wild Animal Park as well. Since the zoo is one of our favorite places, we've sprung for the membership two years in a row now.

You might also protest that the San Diego Zoo is a place to see attractions, not to hike. There you would also be wrong. It is quite difficult to resist the urge to stop and see your favorite furry friends, but if you can manage it the zoo can provide a nice hike.  Unlike many zoos, ours has very nice landscaping (officially, it's a botanical garden as well as zoo), and it's situated in a hilly area, which keeps the train interesting, and challenging if you walk at a reasonable speed. While there are many paths through the zoo, there is at least one perimeter path that almost forms a loop, esp. if you are willing to double back once in a while. We walked most of it in about 2 hours, but we couldn't help but stop once in a while to ogle some of the cuter animals. I'm sure you could do it in 1 hour if you had more discipline. 

It would be good to plan this hike on a weekday, especially early in the morning. The zoo tends to be less crowded then, whereas on the weekend you will find yourself tripping over children left and right. We would also recommend picking up a map even if you are a return visitor- it can help you plan out your hike (we got lost a couple of times trying to follow our own route).

Also- it is the law that you have to say the words World Famous before saying San Diego Zoo. Ask anyone who works there.

Shade Index: Plenty of shaded places to stop and rest- 35% shade.

Bathroom Opportunities: Lots. If you don't watch your step you might find it hard not to end up in a bathroom.

No Gorp today- Jymm is currently experiencing technical difficulties that make consumption of Gorp hazardous.

Hiking: Balboa Park

Before we begin here, we should say that this entry is by no means meant to be a comprehensive guide to all things Balboa Park. There are many things, both free and not free, to do there. We plan to cover some of those things in later posts, but today we're going to focus on hiking. There are lots of trails in balboa park.  On the map at left we've highlighted several. (click on it to see a larger view)

The dark green line shows Alan's favorite hike, which has a mixture of green grass, shady trees, and a bit of Urban hiking through the main museum area of the park. Total loop length: about 3-4 miles.  Like most of San Diego, the shade is not complete - perhaps 30% of the hike has shade. At the southern tip of the left-hand loop you will get the thrill of seeing planes fly overhead, almost close enough to touch, as they come in for a landing at nearby San Diego International Airport. It's a bit noisy, but also pretty cool.

The red line shows Jymm's "favorite" hike. It's down in the canyon, which grants lots of shade, and is mostly wooded, with eucalyptus and some evergreens. Actually, Jymm only likes the lower half of the hike - the upper 

half is way too noisy, due to the very close proximity of the 163.  It's about a mile long, one way. 

The yellow line shows a more urban hike, which runs along Upas street, hanging a right onto Park Blvd, and then heads into Florida Canyon. We took a little bit of this route today, and it's a little noisy for our tastes. Florida Canyon also has the disadvantage of being completely without shade and devoid of any but the most scrappy plants due to lack of irrigation. On the map we've only shown the ~1 mile urban part of the hike; follow the arrow to get into Florida canyon. A loop of another 2-3 miles awaits you if you decide to do the canyon part. 

None of these hikes feature "his" and "hers" bushes. But they do have occasional public restrooms, if perhaps the most scuzzy examples of such facilities you will ever see.

Today's Gorp:

banana chips

ginger chips

peanuts

honey roasted peanuts

almonds

pepitas

dried cherries

dried currants

raisins

dried blueberries

Hiking: Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve

This canyon trail runs parallel the 56.  You can park at either end (near I5, or black mountain road/I15), and hike up to 10 miles, round trip. A river runs down the center of the canyon, and there are trails on either side of the river, with crossings every mile or so. It's relatively flat, though there is some up and down as the trail meanders around the edge of the canyon.  The trail is well marked, with maps posted every couple of miles. [map] [website]

There isn't much shade on the trails, but there are enough spots of shade that you can easily find a shady place to rest between sun-drenched bits of walking. Since the canyon is quite wide and runs east/west, the canyon walls never provide much shade, either. We suggest getting there in the morning or evening, when the sun isn't quite so strong. 

At least on the weekend, this is a very popular trail. You'll find yourself sharing with horses, runners, and mountain bikers, along with the occasional mild-mannered hiker. 

We first hiked this in late Sept. We got an early, 7AM start from the lot on the I5 side of the park. It was one of those foggy days where you could only see about 100 feet. With that limited visibility, it felt like the trail was completely isolated from civilization/the urban sprawl that is San Diego, though later on when the fog burned off it was clear that houses dotted the edges of the canyon cliffs with some frequency.  Everything was very, very dry, and there was lots of dust. Surprisingly, however, given

 that it hasn't rained much in six months, there were lots of green plants along the trail, esp. when the trail took a turn toward the small river that runs through the park. After about 2.7 miles we came to the water fall, which is really just some water running downhill over small boulders. It did offer a nice place to rest, and there was even a bench. We kept going for another mile or so, and then we crossed the river and walked back on the other side. At our turnaround spot we found a little wooded glade next to the river. The river was clean and teeming with life- we even saw some crawfish! This kind of thing is so unusual in San Diego, it was quite a treat for our east coast sensibilities. 

In an amusing side note, the sole came off of Alan's left boot after only 10 minutes of hiking. Luckily, both hiking boots were in pretty bad shape, and the sole from the other boot was easily removed, keeping the shoes roughly equal in height.  He was afraid that the boots would fall apart completely at any moment, but they managed to last the rest of the hike OK.

Today's Gorp:

raisins

dried blueberries

dried cherries

dried currants

dried cranberries

honey roasted peanuts

roasted, unsalted almonds

roasted, salted pepitas