When I moved back to San Diego in 2020, I landed in Hillcrest, right on the border of Bankers Hill. Not on the coast, but what I discovered almost immediately was that I didn’t need to be. Coronado, Ocean Beach, Fiesta Island, Pacific Beach. All of them were just 10 to 15 minutes away on a Saturday morning with no traffic and nowhere to be.
Pisco and I made a ritual of getting coffee and a doughnut – I was working my way through every doughnut shop in central San Diego, which is a project I highly recommend – and then we’d pick a beach and go. Fiesta Island was his favorite. If you’re new in town, it’s this flat, unglamorous little island in the middle of Mission Bay that is completely off-leash, and wide open in a way that allows dogs to be dogs and brings them so much joy. He’d run up and down the sand, chase the jet skis, and I’d stand there being so grateful that this was my life.
Coronado is more civilized. The kind of place that makes you feel like you’re living inside a postcard. It’s got that perfect California beach feel with the long lines of sparkling crashing waves. Or on the bay side you get postcard perfect views of the San Diego skyline.
Pacific Beach on a quiet winter weekday afternoon was its own kind of perfect, lined with the boardwalk and people walking or biking or skating by; surrounded by restaurants, and shops, and tourists snapping pictures of the beauty that we sometimes take for granted.
The central San Diego beaches have an energy to them, it’s younger, more alive, a little unpredictable in the best way. We were regulars. We were happy.
Then I moved to Carmel Valley.
Carmel Valley is a wonderful place, and I’ll write about it properly another time. But what had been 10 to 15 minutes suddenly became 20 to 25. The Saturday ritual got harder to justify. And then came the trips where I’d drive all the way to Fiesta Island, or even Del Mar dog beach and Pisco would get out of the car, go potty, and look at me like he was ready to go home. A 20-30 minute drive for five minutes. That’s when the beach trips quietly stopped.
I’d still take him to the main Del Mar beach sometimes, or at least to Sea Grove Park to sit and watch the water. Still beautiful, absolutely, but different, quieter. More subdued. Some of that was the beaches themselves, which have a different energy than the ones we used to go to. Some of it was Pisco. He actually loved just sitting on a bench with me outside and enjoying the fresh air, but he was torn, because there were also so many people he needed to meet! He wanted to meet everyone, investigate everything, and then he’d get tired faster than either of us wanted to admit.
I lost him recently. And I’ve been sitting with the list of things I kept meaning to do and didn’t because either he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, not to punish myself, just because the list exists and now I’m the one who has to do something about it.
I want to walk the entire length of the beach from Torrey Pines all the way down to South Del Mar and back – something he wasn’t willing to do in these past few years. I want to go to Wind and Sea, which doesn’t allow dogs, and just sit there for a while. I want to grab coffee or lunch and plant myself on the sand, and do absolutely nothing useful. Pisco was not a sit-and-do-nothing dog. He had places to be. Now I can be still.
Torrey Pines is on the list too — the trails through the reserve, the views over the Pacific that look like they were designed specifically to make you feel small in the best possible way. Dogs aren’t allowed on the trails, which limited the times I would go. I want to go to the Botanic Gardens and the Wild Animal Park – sorry, the Safari Park, old habits die hard, it was called the Wild Animal Park until 2010 – and all the Balboa Park museums, and hikes that were always too long or too hot for Pisco, and day trips that weren’t good for dogs.
San Diego is a great place to have a dog, but there are limits, and if you’re anything like me and you feel super guilty leaving your dog behind, it means you miss out on some things. So I’m going to take this time between dogs to experience as much as I can that has been on hold.
I’ll report back.