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