15 | July | 2009 | Thompson Life & Travels

After visiting LA County Fire Station 127 we headed down the Coast Road towards San Diego. You know when you are travelling through some expensive real estate like Laguna Beach, Dana Point and San Clemente as the car yards are selling BMW and Mercedes and the mechanics only do these exclusive cars as well.

It seems there is not much land left as all the houses are on top of each other and they are big as well. The land that is left has oil wells bobbing up and down. The beaches are good though and were well attended today.

At Dana Point we headed back on the I-5 and as we were heading through Camp Pendleton there was a hold up of a car fire on our side. A couple of patrol cars and fire trucks and we were on our way but not for long as just around the corner was Squirrel Point.

Squirrel Point is named because of all the squirrels that live there and can be hand fed with peanuts. This was the first time that the kids had come up close and personal to the little critters. We were also entertained by the helicopter movements of the Camp Pendleton Marines.

After feeding the squirrels it was into Mission Valley to our suite. I grabbed a couple of caches while Jenny went shopping and the kids watched TV.

Caches for the day:

Like many other firefighters, I grew up watching the TV Show “Emergency” based on a LA County Fire Department Squad and Station being Squad 51 and Station 51.

In the 6 or so visits I have made to LA, I have never had the chance to visit the station where the series was filmed. I had been to the new Station 51 on Universal Studios back in ’96, have seen the original Squad at the Fire Museum in ’92 and one of the Engine 51’s in Yosemite in ’92. So today we had the transportation and were sort of heading in the right direction and made our way down to Carson City to Station 127.

Station 127 was where Universal spent 6 months filming in and around the station before heading back to the sound stage to do the majority of the filming. The Station has not changed all that much from the 70’s and in fact they have left most of it the same due to the large numbers of visitors they get from around the world.

The Station currently runs a Tiller Ladder and an Engine and in fact never ran a Squad (Station 36 down the road is the Squad Station).

The guys were happy to show us around and even went to a call with the Tiller to impress the kids. I gave them a couple of patches to throw on their board and bought a T-shirt and patch. One more thing ticked off.

I was surprised there was no geocache here so I made one. It is GA1525 – Squad 51 this Rampart Emergency …