San Diego

Last week Sam and I spent the week in San Diego. It was our week break between spring and summer semester. We had such a good time! It was so nice to be able to spend some quality time with each other since it doesn’t seem like we get much of that lately.

Naturally, we had to take pictures of the states we went through…

Somehow we missed Nevada on the way there…

The San Diego skyline from Coronado Island. It was cloudy the first couple of days we were there.

So while in San Diego we decided to purchase a 3-for-1 pass to the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and the San Diego Zoo Safari. We had a lot of fun but the places wore us out!

Our first adventure was to the San Diego Zoo. Can you say HUGE? Seriously, it is gigantic. We were there for about 5 hours. And a little over half way through we no longer stopped at every animal and exhibit. Needless to say, by the end of the day at the Zoo we were pooped.

I waved when this gorilla looked straight at me… he obviously did not like that because he moved to another spot and faced the other way.

Our next adventure was Sea World. It was way fun! And we got a little sunburned because we forgot that the sun burns people after 5 straight hours of being outside in it. The shows were pretty cool and the rides we went on were fun too.

Our last major adventure was the Zoo Safari. It is part of the San Diego Zoo but not really located close to it. It is really like out in the middle of nowhere. It is different from the regular Zoo in that it is on a LOT of open land and many animals live together… like they would in their normal habitat. It is pretty neat. Part of our admission was the African Tram. Basically you are in a giant bus thing with tons of other people and you get to go out around some of the habitats to see the animals. There are other adventures you can go on but they are wicked expensive. Like on one, you get to go on a car thing out by the animals and get close enough to touch them. You’ll see what I mean in one of the pictures. It would have been really neat to do that but we didn’t because, well let’s be honest, we are cheap and broke :).

The rhino on the right that is all by himself is I believe a Northern White Rhino… which happens to be the most endangered species on the earth. The Zoo has like 4 of the 7 that are left in the entire world.

We really did have a lot of fun in San Diego. We stayed in a condo in Solana Beach, about 20 minutes north of San Diego. We went on bike rides along the coast, ate at yummy local restaurants (shout out to Hodad's, a delicious burger place Sam's friend Julie from high school took us to... it was on the Food Network's "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" so it is not healthy at all but SO stinkin good!), played pool, relaxed in the hot tub, went to the beach, took a stroll through Old Town San Diego, watched movies, napped a lot, and just enjoyed one another’s company. Oh, and we also did a session at the San Diego Temple… which is SOOO beautiful! Now one of our favorite temples. I highly recommend going there if you are ever in the area… and I know Sam would agree with that statement.

I tried to capture Sam’s angry face here. He got REALLYYYYYYYY frustrated with California drivers on our way home. It was kind of funny. But then kind of not because they really do suck at driving.