Vacation - Saturday

Holy crap! Saturday!

Again, sightseeing for part of the day. I've stated during this vacation that heaven on earth was the night we all sat on the beach under the full moon just watching the surf at Mission Beach. Well, La Jolla California so beat that night, hands down.

If I win the lottery, this is where I will be. For real.

We went to the Torrey Pines Gliderport. This is where you can strap yourself to a professional crazy person, and go running off of this cliff for a hang glider experience!



This looks pretty mellow, huh? Not so bad. David and Edna have actually went running off of this cliff before and truly, THIS crazy person was seriously thinking about trying to run off of this cliff. Lucky for me, there were quite a few people here but I guess the winds weren't good for running off of this cliff.


For real. Could you just pull up a chair right here and spend the rest of your life just watching the grass grow here? It honestly didn't look so bad here and I thought I could actually go hang gliding. See? There is grass, there is a soft hill, and underneath that, some water. Easy, right?

Then, we walked over to the left to the edge just to see how high up we actually are. Because honestly, it doesn't look that far up.


See those little black dots down there? That's the nude beach! And, those little teeny specks down there are naked people. For real! I don't lie about naked! If I had testicles, they would have been in my throat. As it is, my ovaries may never be back down where they should be! It was soooo misleading sitting up on the gliderport that I would have walked right off of the edge had I been strapped to a glider. Now that I KNOW what's below that drop off, I'm not so sure. Planes fly at this height for crying out loud! It's still indescribably beautiful.

This was down the beach a bit looking back towards the gliderport.



From the gliderport, we moved on to Torrey Pines State Reserve. For real, we needed an entire day just to go through this park! We walked around a little, and even got to watch an instructional video on the park, but it should have been an all day affair to really get to see everything that was there.

Here was a huge cactus that I think is another prickly pear cactus, like we have here at home in Lorain. I guess without winters stunting the growth, this is what the cactus SHOULD look like! And, yes, this is that far over my head, this thing was huge!


Now, for what the park was named after, the Torrey Pines. There are only two places in the entire world that these trees grow. One of them is in this state park and the other is about 150 miles from this park and the other is on an island off of the coast of Santa Barbara.




Personally, I absolutely love pine trees. There are so many different kinds of pine trees and each one is gorgeous in its own way. This is no different. It's just mind boggling that this tree only grows in two places in the WORLD!

Of course, we were surrounded by great scenery. The Torrey Pines State Reserve is up on a hilltop and it gave great views of the surrounding area.




I'm stuck. What's better? The water or the mountains. La Jolla gives you the best of both worlds. I'm telling you, when I win that lottery, this is where I'll be.

Here, Ron and I are the Children's Pool in La Jolla CA.


This is a fabulous place! As you can see behind us, there is a cement walkway around this beach. This area was originally designed to be a safe, protected children's beach.

This is another view of the children's beach, with the cement walkway on the left.


Like I said, this was designed to be a children's beach but then the sea lions came. The sea lions ended up taking over this beach! Now there is a huge legal battle going on between the friends and the foes of the sea lions and they are at a stale mate. The city has now made this a "shared" beach. That means all is well for the children and the sea lions. They ask if the sea lions come on the beach, everyone give them a wide berth and to not interact with them. Unfortunately, the day we were there, there were NO sea lions on the beach!

This is a view from the walkway and also us ON the walkway!




However, when we were walking on the walkway, we did see some sea lions on the ocean side of the walkway. It was amazing to watch these guys playing in the surf. To be this close to them was awesome!



So that was most of our Saturday. However, the best was yet to come!

Saturday night, we went to the Pechanga Casino is Temecula California. It's great to be at the casino, but we were there on a mission! We had tickets to see a Kathy Griffin, live! Kathy Griffin, a stand up comic and star of Bravo's My Life on the "D" List, was doing her stand up at the Pechanga Theater. Even better, Bravo was taping her stand up for her next Bravo special to be televised in November! Before Kathy came out, the producer came out and told the audience that due to the smaller venue of this theater, there is a good chance that everyone in the audience WILL be on television! Due to that fact, if you're sitting next to someone you shouldn't be, now was a good time to move! HA! We of course stayed put as we had some great seats!

She was very funny and we had a great time. Not to worry, I'll remind y'all in November when the show will be broadcast in case anyone wants to look for our mugs on TV! I always thought I had a face for radio, but what do I know!

This casino was huge! After the show, David and Edna headed off while Ron and I decided to tackle the other side of the casino. We decided to meet up later at the door we came in. Well, that was easier said than done! I didn't think we roamed far, but I guess in our search for a bathroom took us farther away than I thought! We had a heck of a time finding the front door, but eventually, we found our way out. We found our way out without all of our money unfortunately, but we found our way out.

It was a hectic, fun filled Saturday in California! I love vacations!

PhotoPhun Challenge: Macros

Way cool challenge!

First, thank you so much to Lisa for helping me out with this challenge. Who knew my camera had a macro setting! Who knew it had ANY settings!

There I was on Friday, having lunch at my desk at work. I was studying the material Lisa had sent me on how to use my camera. I sat there and decided to play around a little. It's true: the accidental shots are sometimes the best shots!

I was playing with the buttons on my camera and I was taking pictures of my keyboard. The good news/bad news is that I think I got a really good shot of all of the crap on my keyboard (including what I think is some peanut butter on the "k" and "i" keys). The bad news is holy cow, there is a bunch of crap all over my keyboard! I just cleaned this dang thing this week! Uck!


As I was reading through my camera homework, I looked at the peanut butter jar sitting on my desk. Lunch on Friday was celery and peanut butter. After vaca, I HAD to get back on my diet! Anyway, I thought that the inside of the peanut butter jar would make a great shot. I think I was right!


We are all hooked up with walkie talkies at work. Looking at the walkie talkie on my desk, I thought hey! That would be a great shot! At least I like it!


This was the inspiration for me to call sharp and pointed things for a challenge recently. Who knew I had to turn on the macro setting on my camera to get ANY shot! This is a pony tail holder, no rubber bands necessary. The spikes are supposed to hold your hair together into a pony tail. I love it!


Lastly, as long as I was in the bathroom (you know I love my bathroom shots!) I looked around for what else I could shoot. I saw my container of Epsom Salt. Who knew it was so cool up close!


I need more work on this macro setting. I've been trying some other stuff, but still not ready for the blog yet! I bet if you go look at Lisa and Mark's blog, they were able to make their cameras sing for this challenge!

That was fun! But for now, I think I'm going to take that epsom salt and my rubber duckies and fill up my bathtub and soak my weary bones!

Vacation - Friday

Friday was a sight-seeing day. We started out in downtown San Diego at the waterfront. The first thing I noticed was this cruise ship, getting ready to sail. This was not our ship!


This was our ship: The Hornblower! By the way, The Hornblower is not the little ship in the front, it's the bigger ship behind the little ship!


There are two different one hour cruises on The Hornblower. One goes into the South Bay and you get to see the Naval Station, Naval Destroyers and Frigates, SEAL Training Compound, Coronado Island among other sights.

The North Bay cruise takes you to see the California sea lions, America's Cup Harbor, Nuclear Submarine Base, the Star of India and more! If you're ever in San Diego and you want to take this tour, my suggestion is to pay a couple of more bucks for the package deal of the two hour tour. I can't tell you which half was better as they were both awesome! Just stay on the ship for the two hours and see ALL that there is to see!

Our cruise started with the South Bay. First up were three aircraft carriers! From what we were told, it is highly unusual to have THREE of them docked here. From the left to the right there is: The Vinson, The Ronald Reagan and The Nimitz.


All of this fire power was pretty overwhelming. If you looked out onto the horizon, this ship was stationed watching out over the harbor. If you look just left of center, there is a ship out there.


More about security later. Here is Ron and David, enjoying the ride in the harbor.


This is the Coronado Bridge which goes from San Diego to Coronado Island. A story about the bridge: When this bridge was being built in the late 60s, Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California. In order to get federal funding for this bridge, the bridge had to be at least two miles long. Unfortunately, there wasn't two miles between San Diego and Coronado Island. So, Governor Reagan had an 80 degree bend put into the bridge. Final result? The bridge is now 2.12 miles long! Bingo! Federal funding. That was a heck of an idea!


Edna gave me a head's up of a great shot as the ship was going under the Coronado Bridge. If you timed it perfectly, all of the pilings would like up in a straight line. Great shot! Unfortunately, I'm a millisecond off. Dammit!


One of the ships docked here is the hospital ship, Mercy.


From their website, "Mercy Ships is a global charity that has operated hospital ships in developing nations since 1978. Mercy Ships brings hope and healing to the forgotten poor by mobilizing people and resources worldwide, and serving all people without regard for race, gender, or religion." Awesome. If you're like to read more about the Mercy ships, please follow this link.

Back to vacation. Another long arm shot of the fearsome foursome! I swear, I am squinting in every picture of me! What does that say about San Diego!


Here were a couple of tug boats helping a Navy ship into dock. Cruise ship or not, they kept a close eye on us.


Up a little farther, you see a security boat, also keeping an eye on our docked fleet. I have a feeling that this little boat carried a lot of fire power. We kept a wide berth around it.


Coming back under the Coronado Bridge, I had one more opportunity to get that perfect shot under the bridge. Yeah, once again, so close!


Downtown San Diego as we were coming back into port before starting on the North Bay part of the tour.


Docked down just a little bit from where The Hornblower docks is the Star of India, which is part of the Maritime Museum. It's an absolutely gorgeous ship! More pictures of this a little later.


Heading out by the America's Cup Harbor.


No wonder I'm squinting in every picture. Can you see how freakin' gorgeous San Diego weather is? This place is just unbelievable.


Now on the North Bay tour, we came across a sea lion resting on a buoy.


Obviously, he didn't want to nap in the same place as these sea lions!


Or even these sea lions! Too bad we found all of them during nap time!


After the tour, we are back in port and we walked down the way to the Star of India. Here is Edna getting a good look.


We had to have some posed pictures! Of course, me and Ron.


David and Edna getting comfy for the photo op.


And, just what I thought was a good shot of the lines on the ship, Star of India!



We also looked across the street and saw Santa Fe. This is the train station where we came in on Wednesday night! Ok, I just thought it was a nice view of some of down town.


Once we finished lunch at Anthony's Fish Grotto, we went over the bridge over to Coronado Island. (In case you couldn't tell, we ate GREAT on vacation!)

This is the famous Hotel Del Coronado, also known as The Del. The Del has had some famous guests such as Thomas Edison, Babe Ruth, the Prince of Wales, who later went on to become King Edward VIII, who went on to give up his throne to marry Coronado divorcee Wallis Spencer Simpson.


The Del was also the back drop to the movie Some Like It Hot, with Marilyn Monroe. The place is spectacular!

Outside the front of The Del was this bird of paradise plant.


Our fearsome foursome in front of The Del.


We are back on the Coronado Bridge heading back to San Diego with me holding my camera up and out of the car window trying to get a shot.


It was a fantastic day in San Diego and Coronado Island!

As a side note, not many people believe that I could be in the same room as a dog. Just for proof, here is me with David and Edna's dog, Kali. As you can see, she is taking a treat right out of my hand! And, yes, I still have 10 fingers on my hands! Go me!


And, a better shot of Kali, who is a Shar-Pei. Is she a cutie-patootie or what!


We were running and gunning, and it was hard to get my thoughts together in the evening to sit and write a blog! I just can't stress enough just how much fun we packed into one week! Look out, here comes Saturday!