July 22 - 25, 2024 - Lafe and Faith's Odyssey

San Diego and Back

In the morning, I woke up early to get a few hours of work in before everyone else got up for the day. This was probably not the wisest move on my part, as today was going to be very, very long. Our docket was filled with exactly one activity: the San Diego Zoo. This is no mere neighborhood collection of animals, the San Diego Zoo is one of the best known and most biologically diverse zoos in the world. We were in for a full day of exploring untold exhibits of animals new and unknown. So, we got moving and arrived at the zoo just after it opened its gates for the day. As we looked over a map, a friendly employee came over and told us that we needed to first see the monkeys then take the bus tour as the line for it gets very long. We did exactly that, stopping to see a variety of apes, monkeys, orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, baboons, lemurs, and other related mammals before making our way to the tour line. We waited for a little while before boarding and getting a neat tour of many of the big attractions at the park, including lions, elephants, giraffes, and bears. After the tour, we continued on through the other parts of the park to see all sorts of animals, from lizards to birds to rhinos to frogs to tarantulas (yuck) to turtles to zebras to you name it. The only thing the park was really missing was an aquarium, which is probably due to Sea World also being in San Deigo. I could go on and on about all the animals that we saw there, but suffice to say that the zoo is absolutely worth a full day visit. We left a few minutes before the park closed having seen basically everything aside from the polar bears and hippos. We made our way back to the house and pretty much immediately went to sleep again. I learned a bit from my mistake and set my alarm for later the next morning.

The next morning came all too quickly, and with it arrived another full itinerary. Today we were headed to Balboa Park, a huge park encompassing a variety of gardens and museums adjacent to the San Deigo Zoo. We got down there, found parking, realized the singular bus running wasn’t going to cut it, then found new parking closer to the museums and walked to the first on our to-do list: the Air & Space museum. We walked around through a variety of pre-WWI to modern aircraft, primarily fighters and racers, and spent some time at the interactive space-related exhibits. Satisfied, we stopped for snacks then continued on to the Natural History museum, which had a number of cool bones, fossils, gems, and other artifacts of nature. We were running out of time, so we jumped on into the Fleet Science museum, which is more of a playground than museum. It holds all manner of interactive exhibits from thermal cameras to PVC pipe organs to optical illusions to an IMAX theater where we watched an short film on future cities. We were herded out by the closing employees and made our way to the Japanese Gardens. Unfortunately, we were a few minutes too late, so we paused for a moment to figure out a game plan for the rest of the evening. We elected to head to Old Town San Diego to shop and get dinner. While the ladies and Joel poked around, Jon and I sat and chatted before getting a table with everyone at an excellent Mexican restaurant. With our stomachs full and our eyelids starting to droop, we went back to our Airbnb to hang out for a bit before drifting into unconsciousness.

Wednesday, our last day in San Deigo, was upon us far too soon. We did some early morning swimming in the pool before cleaning up and checking out. Since we had missed the Japanese gardens the day before, we decided to head back to see them. After figuring out some confusion with our tickets, we entered the gardens and were somewhat underwhelmed. They had the presumed bonsai trees, koi ponds, and rock garden art, but were still lacking something. Regardless, we enjoyed walking through them before turning the car north back to San Clemente. We stopped at the house in Dana Point to unpack and make lunch before hitting some thrift stores and a bead shop (Faith’s choice, of course) for the rest of the afternoon. That night, we made dinner and hung out at the house together before going to bed once again.

On Thursday, our last full day in Dana Point, we had a fairly light itinerary. The day started out with some work for me then some packing and cleaning for all of us. We didn’t get far though, as we had a second date with San Clemente State Beach in the afternoon. It was another excellent day at the beach: the sun was warm, the water cool, and the breeze gentle. We did some more swimming, boogie boarding, and smash ball(ing?) before bidding the beach a fond farewell. Since we were close to Thrifties ice cream, I advocated with all my might for a stop. Thankfully, the Westers are reasonable people and could be convinced to stop. While the lady was making our cones, a young boy ran into the store, behind the counter, stuck his hand directly into the bucket, grabbed a handful of ice cream, and stuck it into his mouth as he ran away. All of us, including the server, were nonplussed. As we gathered our composure, one of the owners came over and told us that this was not the first time this had happened. Apparently, the boy had committed the same horrifying act several times the prior day as his mother dorked around on her phone. Low and behold, as the owner was recalling the incidents, the boy came along again, this time with his mother following closely behind. She towed him away amongst admonishments from the owner and replied only in mumbled Spanish. We left Thrifties and won’t be back for a while, hopefully she did the same. Back at the house, we did a bunch more cleaning and packing before heading out for a nice dinner at a restaurant on the San Clemente pier. We watched the sun set over the ocean, got some lovely pictures, then spent a few more hours hanging out together and preparing for the next day’s journeys.