Day 6 - USS Midway tour & San Diego Zoo

Today was our last day in San Diego; we did not want to leave. We should have booked an extra couple of nights here. The first stop today was the aircraft carrier USS Midway. She is now a floating museum in San Diego Harbor.

Aerial photo courtesy of midway.org

This was an incredible tour. If you have never seen an aircraft carrier in person it is an awe inspiring scene. To begin with, these are floating cities with a crew of 4,500 personnel to support operations. Over 13,000 meals were served daily. This carrier is over 1,000 feet in length in it's final configuration (it had 3 over the 47 years of service). The ship carried over 2.3 million gallons of diesel fuel for propulsion/generators and over 1.2 million gallons of jet fuel. All eleven carriers in service today are nuclear powered so, they don't have to carry as much diesel fuel.

Taking a break on the flight deck elevator

In front of an F14

This carrier began its career just as WWII ended; when it was commissioned it was the largest ship in the world for a decade, the first too large for the Panama Canal. And, her career continued until Desert Storm, where it served as the flagship of Persian Gulf air operations.

Here are a couple of photos from maps in the strategy/war room depicting aerial targets during Operation Desert Storm.

Wide-angle photo

Close-up photo

We toured everything except, the Island Superstructure, which is the large tower structure on the flight deck, and the 2nd deck. The island housing all thing related to primary flight operations and the bridge. Our youngest girl did not meet the height requirement to visit this portion of the tour....there are some very step stairs. The tour includes a self-guided audio presentation. You wear a headset that is attached to a keypad device. As you walk to each exhibit you simply enter the number on the display into your keypad device and a 1-3 minute audio presentation is played. This audio includes various crew members relating their personal experiences. Also present throughout the tour were retired USS Midway personnel serving as docents. One outstanding discussion was a retired pilot who gave a 15 minute presentation on the landing process (on the flight deck, at the back of an F4). Watching Top Gun I always wondered what the phrase "call the ball" meant during one of the fighter approach scenes....now I know. I have always believed the US Navy has the best pilots in the world...this presentation confirmed this.

Here are a several pilot wannabees:

If you are ever in San Diego this is a definite stop on your itinerary. The girls got a tired were somewhat bored with this but, Dianna and I both loved it.

We headed out to the zoo at around 12:30. Everyone decided to eat In-n-Out, again! So, we typed it into the GPS and it promptly directed us to the closest one. We bought this GPS last Christmas and it has been the coolest thing, especially traveling somewhere new. We entered all of the addresses for our stops...so with just a couple clicks it guides us step-by-step with visual/audio directions.

After another great In-n-Out meal we went to the zoo.

Today we had several people comment that "we brought the heat from Texas." It was hot in SD today. Hot in the coastal area is 85. The zoo was definitely hot. The zoo was great. It is situated in a canyon are within Balboa Park, with a very tropical feel. The San Diego Zoo is known for their large koala collection:

We saw our first, and so far only, movie star at the zoo:

From Animal Planet's Meerkat Manor

Our youngest daughter feel asleep about an hour and a half into our 5 hour visit.

This meant she missed most of the zoo, including the pandas. There was about a 20 minute wait to enter the panda exhibit.

Mom taking a nap


Mom waking up and stick her tongue at us.

Baby making a run from Mom.

Mom showing baby who the boss is...


Here's an "American" panda
with our girls.

At Sea World all of us rode the sky ride....our oldest saw the sky ride at the zoo and kept asking (and asking) to ride the one at the zoo. Unlike the Sea World being a round trip ride the zoo's sky ride takes you from one side of the park to the other. So, for the both us this would be a $12 trip to get there and then get back. As I prepared to purchase our tickets I pleasantly surprised to find out that our "City Pass" allowed unlimited sky rides. City Pass is the prepaid ticket we purchased from costco.com that allowed us deeply discounted admission to San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Disneyland, Disneyland's California Adventure and Universal Studios.

The sky ride view was incredible:

Gorillas from the sky ride

After leaving the zoo we made the trip to Anaheim. We went through Chik-fil-A drive through in Oceanside. It was empty with the exception of the car in front us. I guess this place isn't as popular in Cali. Traffic wasn't too bad, as it was around 8pm. At one point, the freeway was 8 lanes wide. It's Disney tomorrow...the girls are very excited.

Day 5 - San Diego Beaches

This morning we headed out to Carbillo National Monument. This area is dedicated to Juan Cabrillo, the first Europeaner to set foot on the Western coast. The view from atop Point Loma was great, even with the morning haze.

Originally, we had planned to hike the Bayside Trail but, discovered it did not have shoreline access. So, instead we walked to the lighthouse and then to the Whale Overlook for some photo ops. In the late winter this area is a good vantage point to view the migrating grey whales.

Here's a nice photo of the girls with the lighthouse
in the background.(I know by now some of you are
starting to wonder, based a photographic evidence,
or lack thereof, did I even go on this trip).

Next, we drove down to Tide Pool area. Unfortunately, the tide was up but, we still managed to see some small ocean life.

Here's a small crab hiding from me in a crevice.

The shoreline here was beautiful.

Natural rock arch up against the shore.

Back at the hotel we changed into our swimming gear. Before hitting the beach we made a stop at Hodad's.

Yes, there is about a 15-20 minute wait here.

This place was recently featured on the Food Network. Located just a block from Ocean Beach, this is one laid back hamburger shack. The decor is wall-to-wall license plates with quirky messages.

Here are some interesting observations about Hodad's: huge, community-type table in the middle of the floor, in the shape of a huge surf board; wait staff is full of body ink; loud alternative rock music playing at club level volumes; patron ages ranged from 10 to 65; and kitchen crew definitely must stay away from any of those intense, hospital magnetic-type sources due to the many piercings.

About the food: the burger was good but, not as good as the hype. It came with a pile of vegetables, I usually prefer more meat that veggies but, I wanted to eat "it like they make it." The side were good but, I was disappointed that both the fries and onion rings were food service vs. being freshly prepared from scratch on-site. Would I go back next I am in town, probably not. Hodad's does practice menu simplicity.

From Hodad's we headed to a spot a couple of minutes away on Ocean Beach.

Leaving Hodad's going toward Ocean Beach.

The original plan was to go to a beach in La Jolla but, Ocean Beach is much closer to our hotel (and parking was free). This was the first trip to a beach for the girls and they loved it. They couldn't get enough of the sand or the water (which was quite cold). They spent their time in the water "battling" the waves and looking for shells and the, other half making sand castles. Both of the girls had spent 4 weeks of this summer on swim lessons. They are actually very accomplished swimmers for their age (at least compared to me at that age). They both like to go underwater to get dive rings. At the beach they both wanted to swim underwater....that is until some salt water splashed into their faces.

This girls made several trips to the 'well' to make some wetter castle making sand.

About half of the people at this beach spot had boogie boards. I will have to rent/buy one this next time...it looks too fun! Have I mentioned the weather? The family spent about 3 1/2 hours at the beach and no one broke a sweat.

Leaving our mark in the sand...I should have used some Krylon on the outhouse 'cause this only last about 5 minutes before washing away :)

We left the beach with the intention of relaxing in the hotel pool but, when we arrived back the girls were too tired to keep swimming. So, we had to figure out where to eat. Dianna wanted pizza (she could eat pizza everyday!). Of course, California originated the concept of what I call non-traditional pizza toppings. We had a choice of Oggi's Pizza & Brewing Co, Sammy's Woodfired Pizza, or Pizza Nova. All of these were within walking distance from our hotel...we chose Pizza Nova. It was good choice and somewhere we would definitely visit again. The location was cool; we had a table against a window that overlooked the harbor full of boat slips, loaded with yachts. I really need to hit the lottery.....

Before our wood-fired pizza arrived they served us complimentary baked, garlic dough balls that had a light coating of olive oil/rosemary. Dianna and I had the Works pizza (minus the anchioves) and the girls split a kid's cheese pizza.

If you find yourself in SD with a pizza craving,
I suggest you hit up Pizza Nova !

We also split half of the house salad (our waitress was good about not upselling the larger portions and, she was, like, totally from Cali, OMG). This half salad was enough for both of us. It was different and really, really good. It consisted of California lettuce mix with glazed walnuts, cranberries and apples all tossed in an apple cider vinaigrette.