We vacationed to San Diego a bit ago. It was a lot of fun. I found that I really liked the friendly, relaxed beach vibe. The weather was great. I loved being able to be outdoors even if it was 6 am or after dark and still have it be really comfortable even while wearing shorts and T-shirt. It was pretty depressing coming back to Utah with the nearly freezing rain.
It was a great weekend though. On our first day we went to the safari park. It was huge and difficult to navigate. We saw almost everything there but it felt like we walked around in circles quite a bit. It was fun though.
Here's Tessa eating her cheetos in front of a cheetah.
Here we are riding in the African safari tram.
Here we are seeing the elephants.
Tessa loved these stepping stones.
It was a lot of fun but we got pretty tired out.
My favorite exhibit was the butterfly room. Tessa's favorite was the gorillas. We saw them twice. David's favorite was the tigers.
On our second day David and I did a whale watching tour and went stand up paddle boarding. Thank you mom for coming so we could do some more high adventure type activities. On our whale watching tour, we didn't see any whales or dolphins but we still got to see sea lions and some neat birds and it was cool just to be out in the open ocean. I got pretty seasick but I enjoyed it anyway.
After our whale watching tour, we went stand up paddle boarding. It was super fun. I lost my balance once and fell in but for the most part, it wasn't too hard. I liked getting out and exercising a little and enjoying the water. We paddled all the way across the harbor to the beach on the other side where we sat and relaxed enjoying the sand for a little while.
Then on the next day, we went on a kayaking tour at La Jolla beach. We had to kayak super hard to make it past these massive waves that were crashing into us. They kept coming and coming totally soaking us and affecting our visibility making it difficult to keep paddling hard and staying straight. The first time we tried to make it out past the surf, it tipped us over after hitting us several times. It was pretty scary because after we capsized the waves kept coming and coming and I ended up swallowing a lot of salty ocean water. We had to drag our kayak back out to the beach where the waves were gentle enough to let us get back in our kayak. The second time we tried to get out past the waves, we made it. One of the 3 kayaks on our tour who tried to make it past the surf capsized once or twice and gave up. Once we made it out our tour guide said the waves were stronger than usual and that we should be proud of ourselves for making it out past the surf. The waves were still really big past the surf but they were more rolling and weren't crashing. Once we were out, we kayaked out to the La Jolla caves but the surf was crashing too hard on the entrance to go inside. I got super sick being out on the waves on such a small boat but it was really fun. Then on the way back to the beach, we got to catch and ride a wave in.
After our kayaking, we played out on the beach all together. We all had so much fun playing in the sand and running from the waves.
The girls absolutely loved playing in the sand. Tessa made a sand angel (like a snow angel but with sand) and she made sand castles and looked for seashells.
I'm pretty sure Jenny got her daily recommended amount of sodium with the amount of sand she ate. She also just had a lot of fun crawling around in the sand and digging her hands in it.
Our hotel was right next to the original Rubio's so we went there twice for dinner and they seriously had the best fish tacos I have ever had. Since getting back Tessa has expressed multiple times that she wants to go back to San Diego and play in the sand. We'll also play pretend that we're going to San Diego which will include an airplane ride where we get to pick out if we want apple or orange juice and drink our pretend juice and eat our pretend cookies. Then we'll pretend the flight attend has given us a coloring book and crayons and we'll color. The game has also included riding a bus to get our rental car and digging with her shovel and pail in the pretend sand and running from pretend waves. I'm amazed about how much she remembers from our trip and how much she still asks to go back weeks after our trip. We'll have to visit again sometime.
