Where the turf meets the surf

Doesn't that look good? We had breakfast in fancy La Jolla yesterday (this is some Californian version of Eggs Benedict) on the way to the Del Mar racetrack.  Having a sunny Sunday to wile away in San Diego is a pretty sweet dilemma.  Balboa Park? The Zoo? Sea World? Old Town?

Watching horse races might seem like a strange choice, but the historic Del Mar track is one of the most beautiful and famous tracks in the world.  We've always wanted to go, but the problem was the timing-- in the past, Del Mar held only one short meet a year, always during the summer months.  When we found out they just added a second November season, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was too good to pass up.

Del Mar was built by Bing Crosby and a handful of his Hollywood cronies back when horse racing was second only to baseball as a national pastime. The great Seabiscuit ran at Del Mar and won, on the first ever televised race. When the track opened in 1937, Bing was at the gate to personally greet fans.

In the1940's the track became a playground for Hollywood stars, traveling to Del Mar by luxurious train service.  The track is right by the ocean, and in the old days the horses were exercised on the beach. The cold salt water was thought to be good for their legs, and it probably was.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Del Mar continued to be one of the premier racetracks in the country, however the demographics stayed pretty much the same.  The track attempted to run a fall meet in the 1960s but later canceled it after getting lackluster results. Hopefully, they'll have better luck this time.

About 15 years ago, the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club 's marketing team realized they had to attract a more youthful audience as well as a female audience, so they focused Del Mar as a fashionable destination, using social media and other avenues to market the racetrack. Not just for racing, but a multitude of other events like concerts and vintage themed galas.

And then the Beautiful People started to show up!

Del Mar is considered to be the oldest sporting venue in the county, and the Paddock (where the horses are paraded before each race) looks just like it did back in the 1930's-- beautiful, old California retro.

We sat in the free grandstand section which worked just fine, especially since we couldn't have passed the dress code in the Club House anyway, where the gentlemen are expected to wear jackets and the ladies dresses.  But a horse race is a horse race, not matter where you are, and we followed our usual betting strategy.  John reads the racing papers and I run back and forth the the Paddock to check out his hunches with my incredibly astute equine intuition.  Ha! Were we lucky?  We won a cool $5, which paid for that bag of popcorn.

The day passed too quickly, and we got back to the beach just in time to catch the sunset.  This morning, we're headed east to the desert.