By Pat Buntin

Just over 2 years ago, my husband Roy and I moved from Troy, Michigan to San Diego. Our two sons moved here about 12 years earlier, when they graduated from college. They both married California girls and started having California babies. We knew then that they would not be moving back to the cold, snowy winters. So, once Roy and I both retired, we moved here and bought a home in Hidden Meadows. Everyday we comment to each other how much we enjoy the abundance of sunny days.

We love to travel and moving to the West coast gives us the opportunity to see this part of the country. Since our sons have lived here for a while, during our annual visits, we would see the great places that San Diego has to offer. We visited the zoos, the Balboa park museums, Coronado Island, Old Town, Embarcadero, Seaport Village, Julian and so on. We ventured out further to Catalina Island, Santa Barbara, and Hearst Castle.

But now that we moved here, we were not sure what else was out there to see. We now had more time to explore our new Southern California home and we didn’t have to cram our trips into a one week vacation period. This is when we discovered DayTripperbTours. They describe themselves as Deluxe Motor Coach Excursions from San Diego. They are based in El Cajon.

We have gone on several of the trips and thoroughly enjoyed them all. One of the first trips we went on was to the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts & Pageant of the Masters. The motor coaches, which seem to be very new and in excellent condition, picked us up at the location we selected – the San Marcos Senior Center (Twin Oaks near Highway 78). There are other pickup locations you can select.

The tour got us into Laguna Beach in time that so we could visit the Sawdust Art Festival – which was across the street from the Pageant of the Masters location. There was also enough time to walk a couple streets to the waterfront and have dinner (on our own) at a lovely French restaurant on the beach. The tour included very good seats in the reserved Main Tier seating at the Pageant of the Masters. This was a unique experience to see the “living pictures” with real people posing on stage to look exactly like famous works of art. Once the event was over, we merely walked out of the venue and entered the waiting bus. We relaxed in the comfy seats as the driver navigated the heavy traffic around the event and returned us to the Senior Center.