San Diego in A Day

This past Monday Teag had to fly a guy down to San Diego for his boss. There were several empty seats in the plane, and since Teag's hotel room was already paid for, Dany and I decided to join him. Maisie was camping with her cousins, and my parents graciously agreed to watch Rory on short notice, so we were able to spend the quality time with child #2.

This is the new plane that Teag will be flying for his boss; it's bigger, and a lot nicer, with a lot more room inside it. Dany took full advantage of the comfy seats, and fell asleep on the flight there.

We really only had about 24 hours, but we wanted to cram as much stuff in as we could. We decided to forgo the big theme parks, and due to the fact that our hotel was literally a stones throw away, we headed into Old Town. Speaking of our hotel, we had a great view of Old Town right outside our door.

The first place we stopped was the Whaley house. It's supposedly the most haunted dwelling in America, but Teag was less than impressed. I thought it was pretty cool from a historical standpoint, but Dany was disappointed that we didn't see the "Ghost Dog" that apparently dwells on the upper level. We did see a pretty cool little stage there though.

Next we headed over to the Mormon Battalion Visitors Center. It's only recently been reopened after a remodel, and it was really cool! They had a really interesting interactive video tour that did a great job of personalizing the story of the people who journeyed the furthest in US military history. And they had some great activities for kids. Dany liked the water pump:

And panning for gold:

But she was bummed that she couldn't really go for a ride in the wagon:

After that we spent an eternity trying to find a beach, since Dany had never seen the ocean. We wanted to find an actual beach, and let her play in the sand and what not, but apparently it's not as easy as one might think in CALIFORNIA! Seriously, we were rebuffed about everywhere we drove; everything is rocky, or owned by the military. Finally we drove up by Seaworld, and found a suitable beach, and all that frustration was totally worth it hearing Dany giggle when she felt the sand between her toes.

She found a bunch of shells, and had a ball chasing all the seagulls from one end of the beach to the other.

Despite the fact that we were in Southern California in July, the highs were only in the low 60's and it was pretty chilly. But our little adventurer didn't let that stop her, and she had a ton of fun playing in the water.

By the time we finally pulled her away, her pants were completely soaked, and covered in sand. But she couldn't have been happier, so we didn't care.

We also spent a good chunk of time wandering around Historic Old Town, with all it's cool shops and old buildings. Dany would get a little impatient with the historic stuff, but had a better time as long as Teag was carrying her.

We packed a lot into such a short time, and Dany crashed once we got back to our hotel room. It had certainly been a very full day for her. One thing that amused Teag and I the most was how candid she was with complete strangers. She'd walk up to little boys and ask them their name, then tell them that she couldn't go to their house because she didn't know them. She was constantly asking after the welfare of Teag's copilot, Jim, and wondering why he wasn't with us, and random strangers often got to hear stories about how she went to Lagoon, or how her cousin Spencer messes up her room whenever he comes over. She really is a social butterfly.

Verdict: Good trip, though very brief!