Travel? Me?

Well, yes!  My wife and I just returned from a quick trip to San Diego.  She was born there and really does love the city but the big draw is that Number 1 Son and his SO live just outside the city.  So we like to go down every now and then to torture them.  We spent the weekend doing just that then added on a couple days so we could do some tourist stuff.

Driving down there was absolutely the worst trip we've ever made down there.  First we got stuck in a traffic jam out in the middle of nowhere thanks to a traffic accident.  Then we got slowed down for no apparent reason at all.  Granted there are plenty of cars on those roads but usually they just kind of carry on with it.  Anyway we left here at 09:30 and didn't get there until 17:00 which was at least 2 hours later than we should have been.  We had fun with the family finding a couple new places to eat and just generally catching up.  By Monday they had to go back to work so we got out fairly early.  My wife is the travel planner and she had found us a place called the Old Town Inn.  It is within walking distance of Old Town and was quite nice.

The first day on our own we spent shopping then wandering around Old Town.  We escaped buying a small scuplture by the skin of our teeth but we both know we'll be back in town again.  If it is still calling to us we might have figured out a place for it by then.  The second day we went to the zoo.  We love to visit the zoo and it really is quite the place.  This time it was a little warm, well a lot warm, but otherwise pretty great.

There were quite a few babies born this year so we got to see some of the young animals.  Giraffes are pretty tall even when young!

There are even wild animals living at the zoo.  Wild as in not official residents!  I'm pretty sure the bunny doesn't have a keeper.

Of course the flamingos are amazing even when sleeping!  There was another one walking up and down the fence line demanding attention from the visitors.  Nope, no one had anything to feed him.

We had fun checking out the baby monkeys.  These two were having a great time playing hide-and-seek.

As I said, it was warm and everyone (and everything) was liking the shade.

Of course the zoo is really pretty large and we only got to see about half of it.  If this was the only time we could visit we would have stayed but having seen about half of the acreage we decided to  head back to the motel.  We walked over to a restaurant in Old Town and had dinner then back to the room for an early night.  The next morning we were at breakfast at 06:00 when they open it up and were out of town soon after.  This time we only had one slowdown so made it home by noon.  Much better!

Thanks for stopping by.  Take care.

Wow, almost a month!

Somehow it's been almost a month since I last blogged.  It's been mostly kind of dull (which I don't mind at all!) and a little excitement.  It's getting something over 100F (38C) most days but that's pretty normal.  We like to get out before 06:00 for our walk and it takes at least 50 minutes.  We aren't power walking so talking about what the neighbors are doing in their yards, etc. takes time.  There is also the big discussion about what's for breakfast!

Last last month we flew to San Francisco for four days to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.  That was fun.  We stayed in a place on Hyde Street where we could go up on the roof and see Alcatraz.

The hotel is part of Wyndham's Shell Vacations Club.  We don't belong but they let a few rooms to civilians I guess.  Anyway, it was a nice little 1 bedroom apartment.  It wasn't cheap but nothing in the city is.  The rooftop area is clearly quite small but there aren't a lot of apartments in the place.  As you can see we had great weather and even managed to get a little sunburn.  Grrr!  Here we leave the desert and get a sunburn in what is supposed to be a nice foggy city. 

This is looking the opposite direction.  It was taken over looking what had been the parade ground.  There were quite a few parts of the island that were off limits.  We were there at a time when the birds have had their young and the park service didn't want us disturbing the birds.  They were everywhere!

We like to just walk around so did a pretty good job of covering the tourist water front from Pier 33 where the Alcatraz boat docks over to the Presidio.  We had two days of over 10,000 steps per my wife's Fitbit.  When we wanted to go farther or come back in comfort we used Uber.  The rides were in the $10-13 dollar range which we thought was pretty reasonable.  The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is reasonably nice to older tourists:  round trips from the airport to downtown and back were $9 each for seniors.

We like to take a ride around town sometimes and this time we took a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour.  It was 2.5 hours roundtrip but we got to see quite a bit of the city AND it took us across the Golden Gate Bridge where you could catch another bus to Sausalito if you wished:  we didn't.  I must admit going across the bridge was a chilly trip.

We got home and resumed that quiet life until just yesterday.  For the 4th of July nature threw us a party:  an earthquake!  The quake, 6.4 in magnitude, was centered in Searles Valley in California but we sure felt it here!  By the road it is 160 miles away but it is actually only 84 miles away.  (I use a great site called Freemaptools.com to give me the distances.)  It was quite a long quake and our house got quite a shake.  All that lead me to checkout earthquakes around here and I found www. earthquaketrack.com.  We get a lot more that I ever imagined.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print.  Thanks for stopping by.  Have a good one.