Dixon Lake is one of those hidden gems in Southern California that is right in front of your nose but you can’t see it. The lake is at the edge of the City of Escondido, the nice part of Escondido. We drove up this street that took us to up the small hill and right at the entrance of Dixon Lake.
The lake is drinking water for the city below. How it is a drinking water is beyond me since there are fishes living in that water along with ducks, turtles and other animals. The point is you can’t swim in that water but you can do so much there. Fishing is a big thing there, they even have fishing tournaments. It is a big trout, bass and catfish fishing waters.
The best part of Dixon besides fishing is camping. The campground is big and has everything you need from showers to flushing toilets to a small store. It has great views of the city at night or you can decide to just get a campground that looks over the lake. There is wild life so you got to be careful with the food. I like the fact that you can reserve a campground and no matter the time you arrive you will have a spot waiting for you. This is extremely important to us because we are planning on camping on the weekends after work. By the time we drive to the campground it will be late a night so having a place to sleep is a blessing.
Another thing I like is that the rangers check on the campsites every 1-2 hours. This includes at night and early morning hours. This helps with keeping the noise down at night to enjoy a peaceful camping experience.
On my last blog I mention how I was on the fence between vlogging and enjoying family/friend time. Well this trip I balance that out. I took a few hours to vlog and take photos of the place by myself. This gave me the chance to explore and test my vlogging abilities (which currently suck) and also enjoy time with the people I care about.
I think it worked out great and now I am able to share the video I made and photos I took with everyone without compromising family/friend time. I will from now on take a few hours to do my photography, vlogging and exploring before I return and set the cameras down and enjoy family/friend time.
Ricardo Breceda is the artist behind these amazing sculptures. His start as an artist was accidental as described in “The Accidental Artist,” by author Diana Lindsay. It was a combination of events that paved the road for Ricardo Breceda to become the “Picasso of Metal.” It all starts with his unfortunate construction accident that leads him to find other means of earning money. He started selling boots to customers; those who could not pay cash would trade. One day a man traded a welding machine for a pair of boots. The welding machine was put aside for a while until Ricardo decided to learn to use it. Around that time Jurassic Park movies were at their peak of popularity. His daughter Lianna one day asked her father for a life size T-Rex for Christmas. With no artistic background or knowledge of welding, Ricardo begin making the T-Rex. With each new sculpture his skills and craftsmanship improved, each sculpture became more life-like. It was only a matter of time before Dennis Avery hired Ricardo to make the amazing sculptures and install them in his property.
hat there was an RV blocking the view of this amazing sculpture. We asked the owners of the RV permission to take pictures of the sculpture while only being a couple feet away from their large vehicle. It was disappointing to see this great sculpture blocked by an RV and I do feel sorry for the owners because they were getting a lot of foot traffic in their campsite.
getting later in the day and more people were arriving to the sculptures. It almost felt like Disneyland, we waited our turn to take pictures with the sculptures. In the morning we took our time playing around with different poses to captures a sense of place in the photos but in the afternoon we started rushing to get to as many sculptures as possible. I started to do a “drive by shooting” which is taking as many photos as possible using the zoom feature in my camera while staying inside the car and driving in very low speed. We didn’t get to all the sculptures I really wanted to see the dinosaurs but the day was getting late and we still had to drive home.
At one point we drove on to the desert floor to get close to the sculptures. That was a very bad idea since the soil was soft and we were not on a high rise vehicle but a sedan. We got suck in the sand, the more my sister pressed on the accelerator the more we sank in. We started to place broken branches underneath the tires from the nearby plants since there were no rocks to create traction. We were only 100 feet away from the main road and the small dead shrub camouflaged our car well from other passing drivers. We called AAA and they were not able to help us because we were to far off from hard surface and it was considered “wilderness.” To make matters worse they said that if they sent a driver it 
would be about 60 minutes. Luckily there was a very nice Samaritan who we fagged down and he stopped to help us. He was very kind and didn’t call us idiots for driving on the desert floor. He immediately told us to remove the branches and said “don’t let anyone see” meaning using the branches. He was skilled and very strong. Within a few minutes the car was out of the sand hole and we gathered the kids and jumped in the car. We thanked him and he advised us to stay near the road and walk to the sculptures. Thank you good Samaritan.
semi jump on th