Palomar Mountain

A couple weekends ago, I ventured to Palomar Mountain to see what it was. I had heard about it through coworkers. It's about 40 miles Northeast of where I live. Its a pretty winding drive to get to the top. There is an observatory, but it's not as cool as the Griffith Observatory. In fact, there is really no distant great view from the top of the mountain. Note the really sunny skies in the first few pics from the top of the mountain.




















I only hung around the observatory for about 20 minutes and then I started to drive back down the mountain to head home. Out of nowhere a storm moved in. It happened super fast. You would have thought I could have seen it coming being on top of a mountain, but it just appeared. Just 5 minutes of driving down the mountain the sky went dark. It was so weird.

I stopped at a casino at the bottom of the mountain to take these pics. These were taken less than a half hour after I took the observatory pics.


I think the cloud in this pic is covering the top of Palomar Mountain.







Hopefully I will go back to the mountain sometime when it is nice out because there were some really cool views from the drive up. Much better views than from the top of the mountain.

San Clemente

Last Saturday, I went to San Clemente, a town about 30 miles north from where I live, in Orange County. It is a cute retro surfer town that looks a place stuck in time. San Clemente distinguishes itself with its retro 1950's-70's and Spanish Style architecture. Most of the surrounding towns are much more modern.












The pier.



Pics from the pier.








Surfers....


...Lots of surfers.



The cute shopping district. Lots of boutiques.

Downtown San Diego

Last Thursday, I had an offsite meeting for work with a few coworkers. We met up in downtown San Diego at an apartment/office that belongs to the owner of our company. It has a pretty panoramic view of downtown San Diego.

Here are some pics of the view from the balcony.


This building was directly across the street. It's a cool looking building, but it is totally blocking the view of the harbor.



Between the buildings on the left you can see the Coronado Bridge. On the right edge you can see part of Petco Park, where the San Diego Padres baseball team plays.


Zoomed in on the Coronado Bridge.



You can vaguely see part of Balboa Park in the left side of the trees in this pic.









We went to lunch at a cool restaurant called "The Neighborhood". This was the apple wallie salad that I got. I thought the tower presentation was cool. I also liked the cactus table decoration.