1985 Arrival

In the early afternoon of a mid-August day, my family, our ’82 Pontiac 6000, and I rolled into Encinitas together for the first time. We had been driving for 4 days from our former home in Michigan. We started that morning from Las Vegas, and didn’t stop until we exited Encinitas Blvd and drove straight to Moonlight beach. It had a lot more sand on it back then and I remember seals running around on it. No playground or sea of yoga pants like it has today. Way less people too.

I was wearing jeans and a football jersey and remember getting soaked and sandy. I was excited, but not stoked, and I remember feeling compressed anger. I was not happy leaving Michigan and my friends there. This place seemed nice, but it was super different than the Midwest. Just the landscape itself was flipped. No fireflies or familiar oppressive humid heat I’d left just days earlier. There was morning fog and stucco. I had never seen that stuff before I moved here.

We stayed for a few at my great Aunt’s house who lived over by Willowspring in what I would later learn was “New Encinitas”. A short time after, we hooked up a rental in Village Park over on Village run west. I saw kids playing out my window, and after a couple days worked up the nerve to venture out on my bike. That was my late summer introduction to this town, 1985.