Torrey Pines and UC San Diego Campus…

One of the main reasons we chose this park was simple… location, location, location… La Jolla is 10 minutes away, San Diego’s downtown is 12 minutes away, Pacific Beach is 8 minutes away and Mission Beach is less than 5 minutes away. And since we are near several campuses, we decided to set aside a day to tour the campus of the University of California, San Diego. My friend had mentioned it was a must see for us since we enjoy campuses.

An added plus was that on the drive over we could stop by and see one of the most famous public golf courses in the USA – Torrey Pines. We saw a sign for the Torrey Pines Lodge so we pulled into the parking lot to park so we could take some time to tour the lodge, the grounds, the golf course and the club house. As we walked to the front of the Lodge we noticed the greeters in front of the lodge were wearing kilts. Sharon also noticed once we were inside this historic lodge the bellhop was wearing a vintage uniform.

The lodge was cozy, quaint and elegantly understated so we wondered what it would cost to stay and play golf at the lodge. A “Special Price for Two” online included a two night stay and two rounds of golf at the Torrey Pines Golf Course and was only $2150.00!!! Wow... has to be the most expensive public golf course in the USA!!! Loved the sign though!

Next stop was the campus of UCSD… really interesting architecture on this campus and a couple of stunning buildings and oddities… The starkness of some of the modern architecture gave the feeling almost of being in a top secret Research and Development center. And with this campus housing only one of two super computing facilities, it just may be…

As we made our way around campus there were a couple of really interesting buildings that caught our fancy. One was the Geisel Library as seen in the header photo and the other caused us to look and look again because oddly enough, it had a house impaled on its corner!

The Geisel Library was “…named one of the world’s 25 most modern libraries, the
futuristic concrete and glass Geisel Library building was designed by world-renowned architect William Pereira in 1970. This campus landmark was named for Audrey and Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) in 1995. The building’s unique geometric design has inspired descriptions such as “a beacon” or “a grounded spaceship bringing knowledge to an imperfect world.” A large unreal looking building and one we feel you must see to truly enjoy.

Not far from the Geisel Library is the other fascinating building… the Do Ho Sul Fallen Star. What is the Do Ho Sul Fallen Star? It is the “…18th permanent sculpture commissioned by UCSD’s Stuart Collection. It reflects Suh’s on-going exploration of themes around the idea of home, cultural displacement, the perception of our surroundings, and how one constructs a memory of a space…. Suh’s small “home” appears to have been picked up by some mysterious force and placed or crashed onto the seventh floor of Jacobs Hall at the Jacobs School of Engineering.” It was fun to look at it from several angles.  It was another of the many interesting buildings on campus. We will probably have to revisit the campus another (sunnier) day…

On another front we took our motorhome in to have it looked at to see if La Mesa RV could repair our water leak. After leaving it there all day we found out that it can be repaired in their shop (they think) and that Tiffin will cover the expense since it was a manufacturing defect. But… we have to schedule the actual repair for another day since it will take a full day to repair it… Sigh… At least we can get it fixed here without having to hurry over to Red Bay that is, if all goes well at our next appointment…