Since my first visit to San Diego (ever!) in September 2025, I’ve developed a love for this city. It’s one of the friendliest I’ve been to, with a gorgeous marina park that offers a wide swath of sky for stargazing.
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I’m not here for too much longer, but my first six days in San Diego have again been wonderful. Truly, in all my travels, San Diego is up there on my list as one of the friendliest, most welcoming cities in the United States, with activities and locations to visit up and down the coast, and the option to vanish into the mountains behind the city.
Hosting sidewalk astronomy, I’ve come to fall in love with the Seaport Village area of San Diego, particularly Embarcadero Park North. It’s by no means the busiest part of the city, but offers a fairly relaxed atmosphere and fantastic south and west views of the sky that are perfect for stargazing in cities.
In my September and December 2025 stints, I stayed mostly along the front pathway across from Malibu Farm Restaurant, but an uptick of vendors during this past week in April has caused me to move right along the water, which is, for viewing purposes, better than the front path (I’d argue there’s a bit less foot traffic being slightly off the main path, but I need to keep collecting annual data in order to substantiate that claim. It might be entirely in my head just for wanting to be on the front path!)
The Stars (er…Planets and Moon?) of the Show
In just six days (five, if you don’t include the cloudy Tuesday!) we’ve already had three really cool sky events occur!
- Saturday April 18th
- Moon & Venus side-by-side
- Wednesday April 22nd
- Moon & Jupiter side-by-side
- Rocket Launch Space Jellyfish
While stargazing and viewing the Moon are exciting in themselves, the addition of these extremely visual events added a layer that ramped up the experience and got people chatting and watching all this unfold together, in real-time. Especially with the rocket launch: almost everyone in that picture was hanging out at the telescope for 30-40 minutes, and I noticed a couple people exchanging numbers and talking about getting together, something that wouldn’t have happened had they not stopped to view the Moon in the first place!
Life in San Diego
San Diego truly is a city where the temperature stays the same pretty much year-round. I remember thinking in September “wow this is colder than I thought it would be,” and then in December it was the same temperature, and now, here in April, it’s the same temperature! The utter lack of temperature swings compared to other cities I’ve visited (namely, the extremes of Sedona, where the temperature drops 30 degrees after sunset, or the blistering-hot temperatures of any town in Florida–that drop suddenly in mid-winter).
While I also tend to get lucky with clouds, San Diego does have its days where telescoping just isn’t an option. December had a few days like that, and this week, Tuesday was the cloudy/rainy day. So I took the opportunity to disappear out of the city, and went and stay atop a mountain about 20 miles outside the city, giving me views of Tecate, Mexico and the outer suburbs of San Diego on both sides of the saddle I camped upon.
I do have to say, I think the road up the mountain to reach this spot was the single-bumpiest road I have every driven my van on (or Kia Soul prior to this, for that matter). It was…not wonderful. The final kilometer was okay, but the first three? Sheesh, man.
I drive A LOT of unpaved roads and this is in the Top 3 worst that I’ve successfully gone down. Sedona has one that sent me to the repair shop (#1 worst), then this road (#2 worst), and then there’s one out heading toward Sandia Peak in Albuquerque, New Mexico that claims the #3 spot.
The mountaintop was chilly and moody as the clouds rolled over the mountains, and aside from two Border Patrol convoys I saw roll by, was a very serene place to camp for the night.
With some light rain, I read one of my recent book grabs (The Order of Time, by Carlo Rovelli), then went to bed….and woke up to a mostly blue sky and yellow light washing over mountains to the north:
Now it’s Thursday morning, and the weather for this evening looks great for stargazing again (though Friday & Saturday both look…bleh). But no worries, because the Moon will still be visible for a whole 9-10 more days, and I don’t leave town until May 3rd at the earliest, so we have plenty of time for telescope nights next week.
After tonight in San Diego, we’ll be sitting at 92 sidewalk astro sessions for 2026 (of 240 planned) and close to 9,000 visitors on the year–which isn’t terrible, but also, in past years, I’ve been sitting at about 20,000 visitors by this point. As I noticed in St. Pete, Florida in January/February, visitation is currently down by about 52% in 2026 as compared to 2025 over the same period.
On the bright side, this staggering decrease has allowed for longer conversations at the telescope and more impact to individuals and groups at large.
After I leave San Diego, I’ll be in Oregon for about two weeks, then, like I said in my last newsletter, I’m hooking a U-turn and driving allllllll the way back down to Sedona, Arizona for a bit, before making like Mario on a springboard and bouncing all the way back up to Idaho and Montana to host some private events and regular sidewalk astronomy during late June to early August.
If you’re anywhere near Missoula….keep your eyes up.
This world is beautiful.
Alex
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