My old friend Mike Thiel likes to chide me. "You like to 'get away from it all,' Bill," he says, "but when you get there, you expect to be surrounded with all your toys." He knows me well. I like to escape, but I'm no camper.

For more than 20 years, the hideaways Mike has recommended to me have been right on the mark. But when he suggested that I stay at the Four Seasons Resort Club Aviara, just outside San Diego, I wondered if he was confusing me with someone else.

The Four Seasons part was comforting; it was the San Diego part that worried me. The Aviara is just a hop from this tourist-saturated area of really southern, southern California. Close to the world-famous San Diego Zoo. Close to Rodeo Drive.

It wasn't until I got near this "alleged" getaway that I realized Mike had, once again, been right. The Aviara is close to even more—the windswept Carlsbad beaches, one of the few remaining stretches of California beach still inhabited by more surfers and anglers than tourists. The serene ambiance of two eighteenth-century Franciscan missions. The eye-popping colors of nearby Encinitas, the Flower Capital of the World.

Oh me of little faith.

Winter 1999