summer trip 2010 - Del Mar

After waking up and eating breakfast at the hotel we headed up the bayside trail for about a 1/2 mile. We encountered a playground that the girls really enjoyed. In the video clip D is having a good time with backhoe while the girls are swinging.

On the walk back we spent time on the shore of the San Diego bay. Here's what happens to a jellyfish near the shoreline when the tide drops....

On the way out to the Del Mar race track I wanted try California's version of a taqueria. My choice was Adelberto's Mexican Food since it was actually near our hotel and on the way to the track. The girls decided to try the chicken quesadilla. It looked promising when we saw it...check out the size of this monster.

The only problem was that the chicken was not grilled...it was sautéed in tomato sauce - dark and white meat. The girls didn't eat much after tasting/seeing the chicken. D and I split a California burrito and carne asada fries-both of these items are very popular in southern California.

This was too much food...probably a pound+ of french fries, cheddar cheese, guacamole, carne asada and a crumbled mexican white cheese. It was surprisingly good-we just couldn't finish it, especially considering we were also splitting the California burrito. The burrito was the size of a Chipotle burrito (no rice in this burrito, yay!). This burrito was loaded with carne asada, cheddar cheese, french fries and salsa. It was good, too. I did feel bad about the girls, though...they just didn't like the place.

As always the weather here is just amazing. You feel the heat of the sun but the continuous light breeze is like an air conditioner steadily blowing on you.

This is the reason why we love San Diego....and this is what we dislike about Keller (Texas). You can see that today was not the exception in either location if you look at the forecast. The low in Keller is significantly higher than the high in San Diego, ugh.

We arrived at the track in time for the first race. Everyone made betting selections through the 5th race....we made winning selections but were slowly losing money since favorites that came in were not returning the money we were betting.

In the paddock prior to the first race

The girls sporting their HM hats at Del Mar

As Trevor Denman the track announcer says...

And away they go.....

Zenyatta, one of my favorite race horses of all-time, is scheduled to run Saturday at Del Mar. I mentioned her on blog two years ago; predicting she would become a superstar.....that was an understatement. She is currently undefeated with a 17 win streak against graded company. She is a very exciting horse to watch run-she's closer which means she runs at the back and charges at the end. Here's her Breeders Cup 2009 race were she took on the boys....

We are considering completely rearranging our schedule to watch her run....this will be probably be her next to last race before retiring.

summer trip 2010 - the drive to...

Another summer trip has arrived, yay! The two day drive went by quick with the exception of the last hour which dragged on and on. First night we stayed in a Deming NM La Quinta. First time I have stayed in that chain. It was clean but I was not impressed. On the second day I started making some interesting road observations: first - their are lots of prisons. I think we passed a total 6 in TX, NM and AZ. This shouldn't surprise me...a podcast I was listening to a few weeks ago mentioned that about 1 out of every 30 U.S. adults is either incarcerated, on probation or on parole. The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. Makes you wonder, are US citizens more "bad" than citizens of other countries or, is the US system broken?

And, what's up with these "Safety Corridors" on the freeway...."speeding fines doubled." Are these just dangerous sections to travel on or, is it an easy way to enforce (concentrate) speed trapping efforts in rural areas. I do have to mention that we saw no mobile speed trap cameras in Arizona this time-I guess they were ramping up their anti-immigration efforts. And, fortunately we didn't have a run in with these fools. I wonder if they would the have cojones to stop these prison breakers whom authorities believe are making a run to the border? Hmmmm, my guess is absolutely not.

Ok...enough political banter.....the driving weather was great and surprisingly mild (low 70's because of some light rain) until Yuma, AZ - 100+. While driving I realized how much of a tech gadget dependency the entire family has....for example, at one point the girls had the DVD going while playing on our old iPhone's, D was streaming General Hospital on her MacBook while I was streaming a podcast I forgot to download before leaving. We also streamed Pandora to the iPad for hours on end. Pandora rocks.

While driving on IH10 in far west Texas I guess my cell phone automatically switched to a tower from Mexico because of this text message....

Almost $20 per MB, unbelievable

unless that's in pesos.

Just south of Las Cruces NM I took this shot of the sun & clouds with my iPhone...

We made really good time the second day and arrived in our San Diego hotel at 4:30pm local time. Here's the awesome view from our room....

That bridge on the right is actually not a road,

just for pedestrians and bikes.

After resting for a little bit we made our way to Pizza Nova. This is a must stop for us every time we are in San Diego - the best salad ever and some awesome pizza.

Just outside our Pizza Nova table

The girls had enough energy hit Sea World after dinner. We arrived around 7pm and it was packed to my surprise.

Apparently this is supposed to motivate Sea World

visitors to buy VW, I think Shamu would be offended

We were able to watch the Shamu Rocks and Sea Lion show - these were both night time versions. The Sea Lion show was very good - funny thing, though, it was great because one of the actors stole the show (actual person, not sea lion). After those two shows, a couple of rides and the fireworks finale we were spent.