Vacation 2012, part 8

Thursday morning we were up bright and early.  We ate breakfast, then packed up all our stuff and loaded up the car.  It was very sad to say goodbye to Mary and Ty because we don't know how long it will be till they can move back here.  I sure do wish they were closer.  :-(

Saying goodbye...

Before leaving San Diego we decided to visit one more museum at Balboa Park, the model railroad museum. Another one of Mark's hobbies is model trains so he had a great time looking at all the different layouts. I was still feeling a bit quesy, probably an after effect of the motion sickness pills, so I ended up sitting on a bench while he finished looking around.

Balboa Park

More of Balboa Park

And even More of Balboa Park, so beautiful!

Model railroad layout

Mark looking at the N gauge layout, his favorite

On our way out of town we stopped at one last beach, La Jolla. It was a very nice place, very busy, but one of the only beaches we could find with free parking. We enjoyed walking the beach and gathering sea shells. I LOVE the beach, so it was wonderful to get one last chance to visit it before heading inland. 

We were anxious to get home, so we started the long drive back.  We stoped at an In N' Out for dinner.  Yum!!!  Too bad we don't have any In N' Out's here!

We stopped just outside of Vegas for the night and slept in the car.  The next morning we drove straight through all the way to Mom and Dad's to pick up the kids.  We ended up spending the night at Mom and Dad's and coming home Saturday morning.  It is so nice to be home again!

Vacation 2012, part 7

I'm sure you all are getting tired of these vacation posts by now but I promise their are only a few more!  With that said...

On Wednesday, we celebrated Mary's birthday, the main reason for our trip!  Mary opened her gifts first thing in the morning and we ahd so much fun looking at the gift from my parents, a photo album of Mary's growing up years.  Then Ty made waffles for breakfast, Yum!  After that we headed out in 2 cars, Mary and I in one, and Ty and Mark in the other, as we were planning to split up after the first few stops.  We went to the bank for Mary to cash her birthday checks, then to Starbucks where she got a free coffee, and finally to a store for Ty to buy Mary her birthday present.  Ty bought Mary a new lense for her camera, sooo nice!  (I seriously had lense envy!  The picture of Jack in the previous post was taken by Mary with her new lense.)

After all our stops we split up.  Mark and Ty headed out to do some shooting at a shooting range and Mary and I headed to Little Italy for some shopping.  We went to a few stores and I was able to purchase one small gift for each of the kids.  Then it was on to the local "Dog Beach", where dogs are allowed.  We had a great time relaxing at the beach!  It wasn't very busy because the weather was overcast and cold. 

Little Italy

Mary, using her new lense on her camera

Our seats at the beach

Me and Mary relaxing

When we were done at the beach we went back to the boat and had some tea and painted our nails. Then we got dressed and did our hair in preparation for our evening plan, going to a fancy Italian restaurant in Little Italy! We got to eat at an outside table and thouroughly enjoyed our time!

The happy couples!

Me and Mark

We ended the evening back at the boat with homemade tiramisu and a movie! Good times!

Vacation 2012, part 6

After finishing up at the Midway museum we contacted Mary and Ty and got directions to their place.  We had no trouble finding it and spent some very pleasant time at the bay they live in waiting for them to get home (they were out grocery shopping).  When Mary and Ty got home we were able to go and see their boat where they live for the first time!  It is a very nice sailboat, a bit small for a family but perfect for them to live in!  We also met their dog, Jack, who we hadn't seen since he was a puppy.  Boy had he grown!

Mary and Ty's boat, The Fairwind

Jack

Boats at the Marina

Mary's bike :-)

Mary made us a wonderful meal and we spent lots of time talking and catching up on all the news.  Mary was on the night schedule at the hospital so she was a bit tired, so we watched some of a movie and then we all went to bed.

The next morning we had a wonderful leisurely breakfast and then spent the day relaxing and talking.  Mary made us tea and scones, which was wonderful!  The only downside was that I got seasick.  :-(  I know, I know. Sitting in the marina with the boat barely moving and I still had motions sickness...  Mark had to run to the store and get me some medicine, what a lifesaver!

Mary and Ty making breakfast in their "kitchen"

Mark waiting for breakfast in the living/ dining room.

The bathrooom at the Marina.  Mary and Ty don't use the bathroom on their boat so we had to walk to the Marina anytime we needed to use the bathroom or take a shower.

The shower stalls at the Marina.  They were surprisingly nice!

Vacation 2012, part 5

 Monday morning bright and early we were up and packing up our things in the hotel.  The plan was to meet my sister later on in the day, so we hoped to go to one more museum before meeting up with her, the USS Midway.  The USS Midway is a retired Naval Aircraft Carrier that has been turned into a museum.  It was pretty cool!  We spent a lot of time touring around and looking at everything, several hours actually.  My battery on my camera died when we were on the very last part of the tour so I didn't get some of the pictures I wanted, but I did get quite a few good ones.

This was a very popular tourist attraction, even on a Monday we had to wait in line for a place to park (and pay $7!), and then had to wait in line to enter.  We debated back and forth about going to this museum because the cost PER person was $18, which seemed really steep to us but in the end we decided to go and it seemed like a good deal over all.

Mark is in the process of building a model of this plane, an F4U Corsair so he enjoyed seeing one in person.  It's amazing how big it is!

Here is a picture of one of the many "ladders" going from one deck to the next.  They were called ladders because they were too steep to really be called stairs.  They were quite interesting for me to manuever with my big pregnant belly and I had more than one person tell me to watch my step since my balance was a little off :-).

Here Mark is beside another airplane similar to the F4U.  This plane has its wings folded up.  It's amazing how much space there was on this deck (directly below the flight deck), you can see there is plenty of room for a LOT of airplanes!

And here is a picture of Mark in the Executive Officers Office.  You can see how low the ceiling was, Mark only had a few inches clearance above his head.  Although I had more room above my head, being a lot shorter, I was still slightly claustrophobic, especially in the smaller areas.  I could never work on an aircraft carrier, that's for sure!

Here is the laundry room with giant washers!  These suckers were huge!

And here is Mark next to the industrial mixer in the kitchen.  You could really make a lot of food with a mixer like that!

Here are the giant soup tureens in the kitchen.  I can't even begin to imagine how much food they would've had to prepare in the kitchen, or how hot and smelly it must have been.

Here is a typical sailors locker.  Not much space to keep everything a person needs!  They had to pack everything in a certain order or it wouldn't fit!

After the close quarters under the deck it was wonderful to come out on the flight deck!  It was HUGE!

Mark had fun having his picture taken in this airplane!

We had a great time touring this museum!

Vacation 2012, part 4

San Diego Automotive Museum, and San Diego Air and Space Museum, both in Balboa Park:

After a great nights sleep at our hotel, we spent some time finding out about local tourist attractions and decided to go to some of the museums in Balboa Park.  Our first stop was the Automotive Museum.  We had a great time going through and looking at all the different cars!

The museum had this DeLorean, which I thought was so cool!  I had never seen one before, but Mark said that he had even worked on them!

After we finished up there we made a picnic lunch from food that we had brought from home (and kept cool in the cooler all this time!).  We were glad we had gotten there so early because by the time we came out the parking lot was packed and we had people waiting for our spot while we made our lunch, not realizing we weren't going anywhere yet. :-)

Then it was on to the Air and Space Museum!  This was one of the coolest museums ever!  We had so much fun looking at all the different planes and finding out the history behind them. We thought this replica of the Spirit of St. Louis was so neat, one of our favorite movies is the old version of the Spirit of St. Louis with Jimmy Stewart so it was really interesting to see the plane up close and how big it was.

Another cool thing was this capsule from the Apollo 9 mission.  It's hard to believe anyone could stay in such a confined space for any length of time!

Mark even got to see a small plane up close similar to the one that he would like to build!  (Yes, he is planning to build a full size airplane, and complete his pilot training to get his license.  Always something new and exciting for him!  :-))

After leaving the museum we drove around some and bought some dinner at Del Taco which we then took to the beach to eat.  It was sooooo pretty, but very cold.  (The next day we had to go and purchase a sweater coat for me the next day, the temperatures were only in the mid 60's to lower 70's!)

Vacation 2012, part 3

The drive from Vegas to California is a very boring one, lots of hot, dry, dessert areas and not much to see.  It's also very hot, so I was glad we were in a car with AC.  :-)

After a few hours more of driving though, with a stop along the way for a picnic lunch, we made it to San Diego!  It is sooo pretty in San Diego, it's almost more than a person can take in, especially after coming through such bland scenery.   This is a picture of Balboa Park, one of the tourist attractions in San Diego. 

We pulled over at a local strip mall, and spent some time on Priceline.com locating a hotel in our area in our price range.  We ended up getting a nice hotel for $50 a night!

After a good nights sleep in a "real" bed (instead of sleeping in the car!), we enjoyed a complimentary breakfast at the hotel and headed out to do some tourist type things!

Next up: San Diego Automotive Museum and Air and Space Museum!

Vacation 2012, part 2

Las Vegas, continued:

After visiting Circus Circus we drove down the road to Treasure Island.  We were much more impressed with the interior of this casino, very nice and luxorious.  We especially liked the two ships outside the front entrance.  They do shows with the ships daily, but not till the evening, and we didn't want to stay that long so we didn't get to see them.

Then it was on to the Mirage.  This was by far our favorite, mostly because of all the beautiful landscaping!  It was soo pretty.  By this point all the gaming areas were starting to look the same to me, but we did enjoy walking around all the beautiful grounds.

After finishing our walk around this casino we decided to be done.  I was getting very overheated (it was almost 100 degrees and this was only 12:00!), and we were anxious to move on to California, which was still a fair drive away.  So, we continued on!