I Went to San Diego and Ate Some Tacos

AND I got another national park passport stamp!

Although we're not planning any big New Zealand-style trips this year, we seem to be making up for it with a good variety of smaller US trips. Oh, well--who needs a retirement fund in this political climate, anyway? Might as well enjoy the pre-apocalypse while it lasts!

Anyway, this deep dive into San Diego and its environs is likely the only trip I'll get this year with all of my immediate family members accounted for (the detours I force them to take on the way to and from college drop-offs are also fun for me, but are, by necessity, brief little swindles away from the proper business of the day), so I enjoyed it even more for the novelty of having everyone I love together in the same place at the same time doing some sightseeing along with me.

Also Wilbear, because I didn't work that hard to earn him just to make him sit around the house for the rest of his life:

Wilbear wanted to see the Pacific Ocean and learn about Spain's genocide against the indigenous peoples of North and South America, so that's what we did!

Welcome to Cabrillo National Monument, everyone!

This was actually our first stop after the airport. Or rather, our first stop after paying for and picking up our rental car at the airport. I didn't realize that there was yet one more step in the process after getting settled in our rental, so I busily set up the car's Bluetooth to play my Going to California Spotify playlist and then MORTIFIED the children when my partner rolled down his window to do exit paperwork with a rental car guy and Katy Perry's "California Gurls" was blaring.

I personally thought it was quite festive!

Here's a conquistador ready to enslave and genocide, comfy in the knowledge that smallpox and syphilis are going to do 90% of his job for him:

And here's the path that Juan Cabrillo and his fellow genocidal maniacs took in their route up Baja California, the California coast, and all the way to Oregon:

Cabrillo National Monument is a little peninsula where supposedly Juan Cabrillo became the first European to step onto the West Coast of the future United States, but presently it's mostly a cool viewing point where you can watch various ships sail in and out of San Diego Bay, most interestingly Navy ships because the monument overlooks part of the naval base.

Here's me briefly abandoning my two most treasured companions so I can get a better look at a submarine:

Three national park passport stamps so far this summer, and at least two more before the road trip to college drop-offs even starts. AND my America the Beautiful pass officially paid for itself here, with eleven more months of national park travels still to come!

You can also hike down to the shore, where in the winter low tides apparently reveal some exceptional tide pools. There weren't any excellent tide pools revealed during this particular summer low tide, but we nevertheless had fun clambering around, getting our knees sandy, and making sure we'd touched the Pacific Ocean:

And then, off to tacos!

One of my goals on this trip was to eat as much Mexican food as I could fit into my mouth, so birria tacos were a good start:

The older kid had a California burrito, and the younger kid stole most of my tortilla chips and drank horchata. She was super excited at first to see that there was an entire horchata dispenser(!!!), but it turns out that, disappointingly, none of the horchata she tried in any of the restaurants we ate at were making fresh horchata in-house. I guess you can get a dry horchata mix, and that was what they were using? Later on this trip I'd order a jamaica that had definitely been made from scratch, but by that time the kid was burned from too many packet horchatas and so stuck to her Diet Coke. 

Tomorrow, Palomar Observatory and the desert!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Thanksgiving in California: 36 Hours in San Diego

Here's our first day in California--at the beach!

My father-in-law is a Navy vet and thanks to him, we were able to stay on the naval base in San Diego for one night. Here's what the beach looks like outside the Navy Lodge:

I spent much of this beach morning lying flat on my back in the sand, camera in hand so I could photograph the helicopters that kept flying directly overhead:

And here's one of the helicopters:

If you blow up the photo enough, you can see that there is totally someone sticking their helmeted head out the door and looking down at me. They're thinking, "Why is that crazy lady lying in the sand taking photos? Must be a spy!"

That's probably not the last time somebody thought that we were spies, either. I photographed EVERYTHING. Who knows when I'll get to sightsee on a military base again!

After we finally managed to drag the kids out of the water, my father-in-law took us on a driving tour so that I could photograph everything else. There were aircraft carriers (we were back at this particular aircraft carrier later in the evening for "Taps," but I had a giant Starbucks coffee in my hands instead of my camera, darn it)--

Yes, I'm going to show you all sides of every aircraft carrier I saw. I'm also humming the "Top Gun" theme at you, just so you know:

--and submarines--

Yes, I'm photographing a submarine THROUGH A FENCE. I'm totally a spy.

--and the most expensive, ugliest destroyer ever built:

The kids had already been to Cabrillo National Monument before with their grandparents (and earned their Junior Ranger badge, because of COURSE), but my partner and I had never been, so we stopped by for a quick look.

Look, another destroyer!

There's a handy spotting guide at the overlook:

I didn't photograph the commissary, either, but we did get road trip snacks and the best bar of soap EVER while we were there. I did not buy a massive toy model aircraft carrier (darn it). The older kid super wanted a Navy sweatshirt, but we did not buy that, either. Our luggage was already worryingly overweight.

Instead, here's an installation of Bob Hope doing USO tours:



It's really beautiful. Next to it, though, is a giant recreation of Unconditional Surrender, which was really gross because every single person was photographing themselves pretending to look up the nurse's skirt.

Nice way to casually degrade women, Tourists!

The next day, we really needed to leave San Diego and end up at Joshua Tree National Park, but first, we had to make two stops at the kids' top requests.

First, doughnuts for the littler kid!

The night before, we'd stayed at a hotel across from Balboa Park with valet service. As the valet handed my partner the keys to the car that morning, he asked where we were headed, and I told him we were going to Donut Bar.

"You really need to try Devil's Dozen," he replied.

So we did both. I mean, of course. And you know what?

We all liked Devil's Dozen better. So thank you, anonymous valet!

This butterbeer doughnut is from Donut Bar:

While my partner and the big kid were in San Diego by themselves, they'd checked out a dog-friendly beach that was right by their hotel. The big kid LOVED it and longed to go back, so before we left San Diego entirely, we did just that. It turned out to be so awesome, indeed, that we accidentally spent the entire morning there:

The kids really loved random doggies coming up to make friends. And a dog only peed on the big kid's sand castle once, and that was after she was finished working on it, anyway.

I didn't get any photos of us actually swimming in the water, but we totally did. It was cold, yeah, but not after the first couple of seconds. Practically nothing to us ice-in-the-bones frozen Midwesterners:

Well, we WERE pretty cold when we finally finished swimming...

No matter, though, because all we did was hop back in the rental car and hit the road. We were on our way to chollo cacti and Joshua trees!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!