San Diego! After hours spent on the phone arranging flights, and then a canceled and rescheduled flight, we were on our way to San Diego to visit Syd and her family. The kids and I flew out first and John joined us later in the week.
It was Emmie's first time on a plane. She was terrified and didn't want to fly. However, by the time we were landing, she was taking pictures and loving watching the miniature world grow as we flew closer to the ground.
We spent our time with Syd enjoying the ocean. She is currently living in Point Loma and took us to and outlook on a Naval base. The views were amazing and we got to hike and see some tide pools.
We also hit the ground running and went to the beach on our first night there. I love the beach. The kids spent hours playing in the water and catching sand crabs in the sand. I spent hours watching for whales and dolphins. No whales this time, but dolphins every day!
On our second day we drove to La Jolla to watch the seals play and play at the beach again. We watched the seals play in the water forever and decided that they are the dogs of the sea world.
We had heard there was a great spot there for kayaking and snorkeling. We packed snorkeling gear in our luggage on the plane and Syd and I spent about an hour attaching kayaks to the top of her car so we could snorkel and kayak in the ocean. We couldn't find the snorkeling spot, however, we had a spot on the beach next to where the kayaks were launching to go explore some nearby caves. Ains and I attempted to break through the waves to make it out to calmer water. It felt like the scene from Cast Away where Tom Hanks is trying to escape the island on his homemade raft. Emmie was pushing me over the waves. She abandoned me when water got in her eyes and I tipped over (crashed). Owen pushed out Ainsley and she fared better than I did. Eventually, with Owen's help, I made it over the waves. Sadly, within minutes Ains and I realized that we were getting sea sick on our little boats. And so we headed back in, where I capsized again. It was a lot of work for getting dumped in the ocean twice! But it gave us all a good laugh!
John flew into town a few days after us. We visited Coronado Island and hunted for sand dollars...
And we toured the US Midway. It was a huge aircraft carrier that has been retired and now sits in the harbor in San Diego. I was impressed and also claustrophobic as we walked around the boat.
We also took the kids to Old Town. Sadly, most of the shops we wanted to take the kids to were closed. But we still made it to the Mormon Battalion Museum, where the kids got to pan for gold, and we got some yummy Mexican Food.
This letter. displayed by the panning for gold was the highlight of our night.
We ventured out of San Diego and away from the water to go to the Safari Park. I'm not going to lie, it was a huge disappointment. Everything was shut down due to covid. But they don't tell you that until after you've paid and have entered the park. There were a couple of cool things that we saw, the safari tram was still going (although I think the safari at Disney World is better), we saw elephants being trained (we were lucky to be passing by during lunch time), we saw a lion active and up close, and we saw a cute dog that was a companion to a cheetah. Other than that, it was horribly hot, and we were miserable. Luckily we had some cups that gave us $1.00 drinks. Those ice cold soda's were the only thing that saved the day! We were only there until the afternoon when we decided to call it a day and go home and let the kids swim in Syd's community pool.
We also did something super touristy and took the kids on a seal boat tour. Normally we wouldn't have, but we had a free activity with out City Pass and so we headed out on the water. The tour was actually fun. We got to see a ton of seals and dolphins being trained by the navy.
On our last day in town we took John back to La Jolla. We went and watched the seals play again, looked at the pretty tide pools, and found where we can go snorkeling (for next time).
Most importantly...we celebrated Owen's 15th birthday while we were there! His birthday was on a Sunday. So after church we loaded up and headed to the beach. It was our best beach day. The water was the warmest that it had been all week, we played in the waved for hours, Owen tried surfing, we hunted for more sand crabs, and of course we saw Dolphins. It was perfect. Then we headed back to Syd's and had home made sushi and fun-fetti cupcakes. And then he and Cy played video games until late in the night.
It was such a nice and much needed trip. I am always sad to leave the ocean, and it was a great week with Syd and her family.
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