About a week before I left for Chicago, my mom told me she really wanted to go somewhere, preferably somewhere with a beach. I'm always up for somewhere with a beach (duh!), so I told her I'd be glad to go. She said, "How about San Diego?" I said that sounded great. She said, "How about next week?" Umm, OK. Seeing as how the two of us usually plan our trips months in advance, this was going to be interesting, but we decided we liked the adventure. The next day, I booked flights and a hotel, and two days after I got home from one trip, I left on another. First stop when we got there? The beach, of course.
See, I told you the pedicure would get better. Ah, I love the beach. Have I mentioned that before? Sand between your toes, the calming roar of ocean waves, beautiful sunsets—wait, it's cloudy. Dang it! We had three nights there, and it was cloudy every night at sunset. Stupid clouds. Oh, well, it was still beautiful and relaxing and everything else a beach is supposed to be.
The next day we rode a trolley around the city on a tour and stopped in Old Town, where we had some fabulous Mexican food (La Pinata, mmm), went shopping and tried on sombreros,
saw an old Wells Fargo stagecoach, which was apparently pulled by a large stuffed horse (most bizarre display I've ever seen in a museum),
and visited the Mormon Battalion historic site, where we met some very nice missionaries who weren't bothered by the fact that we didn't want the whole tour and didn't even ask us for referrals after they showed us just the really cool stuff (thank you, missionaries!). While we were there, we posed with the battalion man because he looked so stately
and the cannon because that's what you do when your last name is Cannon.
Then we went off to another beach, this time in La Jolla, where we saw sea lions playing on the rocks and decided we wanted to play on the rocks too, so we did.
While we were on our way back to the hotel that night, we decided we wanted to go to Sea World the next day, so we did. (I could really get used to this going on vacation without planning everything out first thing.) Sea World was great. We saw a baby killer whale (so cute!) and sea lions and penguins and polka-dotted stingrays and sea turtles (dude!)
and beluga whales (which I fell in love with)
and dolphins (which I was already in love with—a dolphin is my Patronus, after all).
And I got my mom on a roller coaster for the first time since her heart surgery! And she didn't get off feeling dizzy!
The next day we went out to Coronado and looked around the old hotel, did a little shopping, ate ice cream, and (you guessed it) went to the beach.
And then we had to come home, but not without one shot of the palm trees first, because I love palm trees almost as much as I love the beach.
It was a wonderful few days. My mom and I hadn't been on a trip together, other than quick weekends to Vegas or something, for a few years, and it was really nice to get to spend all that time with her just doing whatever we felt like doing at the time. It was just relaxing and refreshing, exactly what both of us needed.
2 comments:
What fun. You do know San Diego is possibly my favorite place to go. I am so glad you made the trip. Was the old Hotel on Coronado still a working Hotel. It is really a beautiful place. Thank ;you for sharing your pictures brought memories back. Sarah and I went with Dean to some kind of conference there and we spent each day on a beach while Dean was in meetings. People thought we were there for the BYU game since it was that weekend but we had to leave before the game. But that was OK we enjoyed the beach.
I love this. SO glad you got to have so much fun. I have fond memories of Mission Bay, at least the part around the condo area where your Grandpa's conference was. It was December and just before Christmas break. The one time I was pulled out of school early to take a vacation. I think it was the only vacation I took where we stayed somewhere other than with Uncle George in St George or at a motel in Filmore to visit Barbara (OK aside from the trip to So Cal before your dad went on his mission. :)
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