We didn't take any pictures on our way back home, but that doesn't mean that we didn't have a good time!
We started off our Saturday by going for a swim one last time as a family. Once that was done, it was time to get cleaned up, packed up, eat breakfast, and checked out by noon. At 1:00 PM, we were finally leaving the resort. *grin* After stopping for some gas (silly Costco pump only filled us up to about 3/4 tank, though), we headed back toward Las Vegas. Since we had eaten so late and brought leftovers with us, we hoped to be able to make it to Las Vegas without stopping to eat. Since we had forgotten to enforce bathroom trips before leaving in our rush, we stopped after a few hours to truly top off the tank, get some snacks, and hit the bathrooms. It was only a 10 minute stop, though, so that was nice.
One exciting moment came as we were driving on a section of I-215 in the right hand lane, about 100 feet behind a jeep pulling a trailer that was just in front of a semi. Suddenly, the jeep and trailer started fishtailing back and forth, with each swerve getting larger and larger. The semi, ourselves, and all the traffic behind us started slowing down sharply as we watched the jeep eventually swerve off the left of the road into the median, continue to fishtail, and finally come to a stop completely perpendicular to the direction of travel, blocking both lanes of traffic. It quickly moved to the right shoulder so the driver could check his vehicles. He waved us on to show that he was okay. It was amazing that no one was hit by another vehicle and that everyone drove away safely.
The kids hardly noticed the excitement as they variously slept, watched movies on the laptop, read books, and snacked. We were able to travel to Las Vegas without any other excitement and arrive shortly before sun down. The kids were glad to see my wife's aunt, uncle, and their rabbit again.
That night we ate a lovely casserole, got the kids to bed, and looked up a place to go to church the next day. We also listened to the party going on at the Cuban restaurant right behind the house, with our room being the closest to it. We were tired enough that we fell asleep anyway, although my wife was struggling as she had been getting hit by allergies all day.
On Sunday, we tried to make my wife feel extra special for her birthday as we got up and ready to go to church. This time, we arrived at the normal meetings and were greeted quite warmly. In fact, when we told people where we were from, we were surprised at how many people were familiar with our little corner of the world - it seemed like nearly half the people we talked to knew the town we live in from having passed through at some point. The kids enjoyed making new friends in the Primary classes, and we enjoyed feeling the joys of our worship services.
We returned to the house for a pizza and birthday cake party that my wife's aunt had planned for her. We all had a nice time together, and many of us napped or watched a movie for a while afterward. We finished the day by being treated to my one of my wife's favorite meals, prime rib, which her aunt had asked me about several times in preparation for the day. We were all able to enjoy the benefits of her birthday, and if you really think about it, we do that every day. She is a wonderful woman, and I'm the luckiest man in the world to have her.
On Monday, we got away pretty early to allow my wife's aunt and uncle to get on the road for their own vacation. We had breakfast at IHOP as a last hurrah, and we again traveled safely with only one stop for gas and a bathroom break before arriving home a little after 4:00 PM. We did a little unpacking and had some dinner and just generally tried to relax to the fullest before the normal routine began again the next day.
Vacation. It was AWESOME!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
San Diego Vacation Part 6
On Friday, we returned to Sea World as we had determined that it was the most exciting for us. We also had bought new batteries for the camera, so I'll jump right into the pictures.
When we first walked into the park, we saw this costumed polar bear taking pictures with tourists. Being tourists, we decided to get our picture taken with it too.
The polar bear was pretty playful!
After seeing the polar bear, we already knew that the first thing we wanted to do was go to see the Clydesdale horses (Anheuser Busch owns Sea World) on our way to the watery roller coaster ride "Journey to Atlantis." My oldest son had an upset stomach the previous time we were at Sea World, and so my second son and wife had gone then. My son could hardly stop talking about how awesome it was, and that it was his first time on a "grown up ride." He had the whole family excited to see it when we went back.
We had a pleasant time seeing the horses up close and learning a little bit about them. For instance, in order to be on one of the teams that gets to pull the famed Budweiser wagons, the horse has to be at least 6 ft tall at the shoulder (I think that's 15 to 16 hands in horse measurements), be a certain shade of tan or brown, and have a white stripe on its face and head. We also saw a comparison of a standard horse shoe to a Clydesdale horse shoe. A standard horse shoe is about 3 to 4 inches across. A Clydesdale horse shoe is about 12 to 14 inches across. They are roughly the size of frisbees, and even the oversized horse shoes I've used to play the tossing game of horse shoes are smaller, not to mention far lighter. It was fun to see.
After the horses, we made our way to "Journey to Atlantis." We had determined that I would go on the ride with the older boys while my wife, daughter, and youngest waited for us. As this was the Friday before Memorial Day, it was much busier than it had been on Tuesday. While enduring the nearly half hour wait in line, I noticed several signs saying that you had to be at least 42 inches tall to ride the roller coaster. I thought that my daughter was nearly that tall, so I had the boys go and get her. We put her against the sign, and it appeared that she was about 41.5 inches tall, which I thought would be good enough.
When we reached the boarding area, we saw a man who, judging by his baseball cap, is a fan of the University of New Mexico. He was arguing with the park employees about getting his little boy onto the ride. The employees brought out a yardstick to measure in addition to the signs, and the kid was obviously no more than 39 inches tall. This man, however, was determined to show the park employees who was boss. We spent at least 5 minutes as the line moved watching him make a fool of himself trying to get his son on the ride. Questions like, "What if I can make him look like he's 42 inches tall? Would you let him ride then?" escaped his mouth, among other oddities. When we reached the head of the line, the employees had no choice but to check my daughter's height and deny her entry to the ride due to the poor sport, who was still wheedling nearby.
I couldn't just send my girl back to her mother with her hopes crushed, so I sent the boys on the roller coaster and waited my turn behind Mr. Belligerent for the head employee to talk to me. After finally offering Mr. Belligerent many benefits elsewhere in the park and getting him to leave, she came up to me and asked how many were in my group. I replied that there were six of us, and she gave us her business card with the following benefits written on the back: Front-of-the-line passes to the Sesame Street kids rides in the playground area of the park, free sky tram passes for the whole family, and free tower ride passes for the whole family. I thanked her kindly and took my daughter back to my wife, arriving just in time to see my boys come splashing down the final descent of the roller coaster. My daughter was pretty quickly mollified to learn that we'd be getting to go on the sky tram and tower rides, as we had planned on skipping those due to the extra cost.
I still think Mr. Belligerent was in the wrong in the way he acted, but I didn't turn down the extra benefits as I thought it was nice of the employee to offer them for having to put up with his antics while waiting for her.
We made our way over to the killer whale show, making sure to sit close enough to get splashed this time. We were fortunate that we were near one of the sides, as the majority of the splashing occurs in the middle of the arena. We were splashed once, lightly, and that was just about right for us. The show followed the same pattern as the previous time, but with several different tricks performed by the whales. Once again, it was a true delight to watch.
Following the whale show, my oldest and I went on a white water rapids type of ride while the younger kids petted starfish. We saw sea turtles, rode the sky tram over the bay, rode the tower ride, and went to see the sharks.
The shark exhibit has a tunnel going through the middle of their pool, so you get to be surrounded by them and see them from underwater. This picture shows just how close they get!
We made sure to visit the Sesame Street 4D movie that was showing at the park. I quickly discovered that a 4D movie is one that is in 3D on the screen and also has seating that vibrates and shoots water and air bursts on you at the correct times. It was pretty fun.
As the day started to wind down, we wanted to see the penguins and the Wild Arctic exhibits, as well as visit the Sesame Street play area and rides. This is when the part of our day that I will call "crappy" began.
The penguins that require cold water (we learned that there are several species of penguins that live in the tropic and sub-tropic areas of the southern hemisphere and don't require cold) and southern hemisphere lighting (near darkness since it's getting to be winter down there) are behind this glass. You can see several penguins standing and some swimming. One of the swimming penguins that I happened to be watching suddenly emitted a brownish cloud behind it. Lucky me.
The polar bear in the Wild Arctic area was napping when we first arrived. As we watched, though, it slowly woke and stretched, shown here. After finally rising to its feet, it sauntered toward the back, where its cave was, when it decided to stop, rear end facing the window we were watching from, squat (if you can imagine a four legged animal squatting its hind legs), and let loose a large batch of material that it hadn't digested. The only thing missing was the steam that would have risen from the scat had we actually been in the Arctic. The kids all groaned and exclaimed "Eww, gross!" whilst the adults laughed.
The Wild Arctic exhibit also had walruses (one of which we saw pushing some brown clod-like thing around on the window right in front of us with its mouth until it managed to eat it) and some beluga whales (shown above, which we did not see do anything disgusting).
One really interesting aspect of several of the exhibits at Sea World is that they are designed to allow you to view the animals from both above and below water. This way, you get to see them as mankind has since the beginning of time, and you also get to see some of the sights normally reserved for divers. Seeing the ease of movement underwater easily made up for also happening to see their bodily functions. As I said at the time we witnessed the polar bear doing its business, "Hey, that's what I do after a nap, too, and it's not like they provided a toilet!"
We finished the day off playing at the playground and riding the kids rides. My youngest also got to have another of his "firsts" in life (hint: it's not going on a ride).
Cotton candy! I love it!
Getting ready to ride our last ride of the day. I Love Mommy!
As my wife's birthday would be during our traveling home part of our vacation, we decided to go to dinner at Tony Roma's to celebrate her after we left Sea World. We found a Tony Roma's right next to the beach a few miles from Sea World, and we happened to walk up to the wall separating the road from the beach just as two local entertainers started performing a fire juggling show. We watched for 3 or 4 minutes before heading into the restaurant, departing with my oldest shouting "You guys were great!" and one of them replying "Thank you!"
We used the last of our AMEX gift cards from Wednesday to help pay for the meal at Tony Roma's, and it took long enough that the kids were falling asleep at the table. We arrived back at the resort well and truly exhausted, but we also felt that we had enjoyed our time to the best of our ability!
One more to come later.
When we first walked into the park, we saw this costumed polar bear taking pictures with tourists. Being tourists, we decided to get our picture taken with it too.
The polar bear was pretty playful!
After seeing the polar bear, we already knew that the first thing we wanted to do was go to see the Clydesdale horses (Anheuser Busch owns Sea World) on our way to the watery roller coaster ride "Journey to Atlantis." My oldest son had an upset stomach the previous time we were at Sea World, and so my second son and wife had gone then. My son could hardly stop talking about how awesome it was, and that it was his first time on a "grown up ride." He had the whole family excited to see it when we went back.
We had a pleasant time seeing the horses up close and learning a little bit about them. For instance, in order to be on one of the teams that gets to pull the famed Budweiser wagons, the horse has to be at least 6 ft tall at the shoulder (I think that's 15 to 16 hands in horse measurements), be a certain shade of tan or brown, and have a white stripe on its face and head. We also saw a comparison of a standard horse shoe to a Clydesdale horse shoe. A standard horse shoe is about 3 to 4 inches across. A Clydesdale horse shoe is about 12 to 14 inches across. They are roughly the size of frisbees, and even the oversized horse shoes I've used to play the tossing game of horse shoes are smaller, not to mention far lighter. It was fun to see.
After the horses, we made our way to "Journey to Atlantis." We had determined that I would go on the ride with the older boys while my wife, daughter, and youngest waited for us. As this was the Friday before Memorial Day, it was much busier than it had been on Tuesday. While enduring the nearly half hour wait in line, I noticed several signs saying that you had to be at least 42 inches tall to ride the roller coaster. I thought that my daughter was nearly that tall, so I had the boys go and get her. We put her against the sign, and it appeared that she was about 41.5 inches tall, which I thought would be good enough.
When we reached the boarding area, we saw a man who, judging by his baseball cap, is a fan of the University of New Mexico. He was arguing with the park employees about getting his little boy onto the ride. The employees brought out a yardstick to measure in addition to the signs, and the kid was obviously no more than 39 inches tall. This man, however, was determined to show the park employees who was boss. We spent at least 5 minutes as the line moved watching him make a fool of himself trying to get his son on the ride. Questions like, "What if I can make him look like he's 42 inches tall? Would you let him ride then?" escaped his mouth, among other oddities. When we reached the head of the line, the employees had no choice but to check my daughter's height and deny her entry to the ride due to the poor sport, who was still wheedling nearby.
I couldn't just send my girl back to her mother with her hopes crushed, so I sent the boys on the roller coaster and waited my turn behind Mr. Belligerent for the head employee to talk to me. After finally offering Mr. Belligerent many benefits elsewhere in the park and getting him to leave, she came up to me and asked how many were in my group. I replied that there were six of us, and she gave us her business card with the following benefits written on the back: Front-of-the-line passes to the Sesame Street kids rides in the playground area of the park, free sky tram passes for the whole family, and free tower ride passes for the whole family. I thanked her kindly and took my daughter back to my wife, arriving just in time to see my boys come splashing down the final descent of the roller coaster. My daughter was pretty quickly mollified to learn that we'd be getting to go on the sky tram and tower rides, as we had planned on skipping those due to the extra cost.
I still think Mr. Belligerent was in the wrong in the way he acted, but I didn't turn down the extra benefits as I thought it was nice of the employee to offer them for having to put up with his antics while waiting for her.
We made our way over to the killer whale show, making sure to sit close enough to get splashed this time. We were fortunate that we were near one of the sides, as the majority of the splashing occurs in the middle of the arena. We were splashed once, lightly, and that was just about right for us. The show followed the same pattern as the previous time, but with several different tricks performed by the whales. Once again, it was a true delight to watch.
Following the whale show, my oldest and I went on a white water rapids type of ride while the younger kids petted starfish. We saw sea turtles, rode the sky tram over the bay, rode the tower ride, and went to see the sharks.
The shark exhibit has a tunnel going through the middle of their pool, so you get to be surrounded by them and see them from underwater. This picture shows just how close they get!
We made sure to visit the Sesame Street 4D movie that was showing at the park. I quickly discovered that a 4D movie is one that is in 3D on the screen and also has seating that vibrates and shoots water and air bursts on you at the correct times. It was pretty fun.
As the day started to wind down, we wanted to see the penguins and the Wild Arctic exhibits, as well as visit the Sesame Street play area and rides. This is when the part of our day that I will call "crappy" began.
The penguins that require cold water (we learned that there are several species of penguins that live in the tropic and sub-tropic areas of the southern hemisphere and don't require cold) and southern hemisphere lighting (near darkness since it's getting to be winter down there) are behind this glass. You can see several penguins standing and some swimming. One of the swimming penguins that I happened to be watching suddenly emitted a brownish cloud behind it. Lucky me.
The polar bear in the Wild Arctic area was napping when we first arrived. As we watched, though, it slowly woke and stretched, shown here. After finally rising to its feet, it sauntered toward the back, where its cave was, when it decided to stop, rear end facing the window we were watching from, squat (if you can imagine a four legged animal squatting its hind legs), and let loose a large batch of material that it hadn't digested. The only thing missing was the steam that would have risen from the scat had we actually been in the Arctic. The kids all groaned and exclaimed "Eww, gross!" whilst the adults laughed.
The Wild Arctic exhibit also had walruses (one of which we saw pushing some brown clod-like thing around on the window right in front of us with its mouth until it managed to eat it) and some beluga whales (shown above, which we did not see do anything disgusting).
One really interesting aspect of several of the exhibits at Sea World is that they are designed to allow you to view the animals from both above and below water. This way, you get to see them as mankind has since the beginning of time, and you also get to see some of the sights normally reserved for divers. Seeing the ease of movement underwater easily made up for also happening to see their bodily functions. As I said at the time we witnessed the polar bear doing its business, "Hey, that's what I do after a nap, too, and it's not like they provided a toilet!"
We finished the day off playing at the playground and riding the kids rides. My youngest also got to have another of his "firsts" in life (hint: it's not going on a ride).
Cotton candy! I love it!
Getting ready to ride our last ride of the day. I Love Mommy!
As my wife's birthday would be during our traveling home part of our vacation, we decided to go to dinner at Tony Roma's to celebrate her after we left Sea World. We found a Tony Roma's right next to the beach a few miles from Sea World, and we happened to walk up to the wall separating the road from the beach just as two local entertainers started performing a fire juggling show. We watched for 3 or 4 minutes before heading into the restaurant, departing with my oldest shouting "You guys were great!" and one of them replying "Thank you!"
We used the last of our AMEX gift cards from Wednesday to help pay for the meal at Tony Roma's, and it took long enough that the kids were falling asleep at the table. We arrived back at the resort well and truly exhausted, but we also felt that we had enjoyed our time to the best of our ability!
One more to come later.
Monday, June 1, 2009
San Diego Vacation Part 5
After a nice, relaxing day on Wednesday, we piled into the van and drove about 20 miles to the Escondido area to get to the Wild Animal Park. As we were entering, we ran into some friends who live just a few blocks from us. We knew they were also vacationing in the area, and we'd known that they would be at Sea World on Tuesday, so we were surprised to run into them here instead. We had a quick chat, but the kids were anxious to go and see things, so off we went.
When you first enter the Wild Animal Park, it seems a lot like the zoo. I wondered why we had driven all the way out there for a while. We had decided that we would start with the bus tour (instead of leaving it for the end like we had with the zoo), and as we worked our way down toward the tour area, we stopped to ride a carousel (again, the 3 for 1 passes got us on this for free instead of having to pay a few dollars for it) and visit the discovery area, where they had a place for the adults to sit while the kids played with puzzles, toys, puppets, paper and crayons, etc, all under a nice, cool awning. The kids get to do that sort of thing fairly often when we're home, too, but we didn't mind taking a break. *grin*
We ended up taking the "short" way down to the bus tour, which involved a platform with an elevator to take us down about 30 feet in elevation. I was starting to realize how much bigger than the zoo this park was. We passed a bright yellow hot-air balloon that we thought about riding (it would have cost us about $70 for the whole family for a 4 or 5 minute ride, though), and made our way to the bus area. Once we were loaded on, we discovered that what makes the Wild Animal Park so different from the zoo is that they have large, multi-acre exhibits based on environment rather than animals. We saw the savanna area mostly, which had at least 10 different groups of animals all living together in the same exhibit. We saw a herd of antelope decide to take off running down one long hill and up another, all in unison. We saw two different kinds of rhinoceroses, about 10 giraffes, including a few babies, lots of antelope, gazelles, etc, and learned a lot about them from the tour guide. The tour guides sure seem to know their stuff, as they can tell us all about the animal's native behaviors, the status of their native environments as concerns habitat loss, and the names of most of the animals that live there.
We also saw several people who had paid (a lot) more money to either tour these various large exhibits on Segway scooters with off road tires or in a large, safari like pickup truck that drove inside the exhibit itself for extreme close up pictures.
These large exhibits are kind of a cross between a zoo and an actual safari. The animals are enclosed and (relatively) nearby, as with a zoo, but they are behaving as if they were in the wild and interacting with other animals, as with a safari. It was fascinating to me. I think the kids did a good job to not complain too much about how long it took. *grin*
After the bus tour, we made sure to see the elephants (and zoo keeper), the lions (the alpha male was sitting on top of a broken down jeep under a tree near the front of the exhibit), and we even managed to run across some native deer on our way back up that had made it into the park. We ate lunch at one of the restaurants (hot dogs and somewhat fancy sandwiches with the trimmings for nearly the cost of the balloon ride), stopped at an oasis that had water spraying out of kid friendly statues to help cool you down, and worked our way back up toward the front.
We stopped at a petting area, where my daughter very carefully made sure to pet every single specimin in the area, visited the discovery area again, where we had a lovely conversation with the employee on duty who complimented our kids highly (that always makes a parent feel good) and discussed our church (specifically, the San Diego Temple, which she had heard was closed for a while), and rode the carousel a few more times.
We learned that our good preparation of bringing water bottles that had been frozen overnight was even better when you remembered to do it. I guess our day off had caused us to forget our preparations.
I'm learning now, too, that without pictures, some of the specifics of the memories are fading kind of quickly (of course, the week that we've been back has been VERY hectic, so that contributes too).
In the end, I decided that the Wild Animal Park was worth visiting, but I don't know that I would want to go again with small children because they don't have the patience to enjoy the uniqueness of this attraction. At least, my kids don't seem to have that kind of patience.
More to come later.
When you first enter the Wild Animal Park, it seems a lot like the zoo. I wondered why we had driven all the way out there for a while. We had decided that we would start with the bus tour (instead of leaving it for the end like we had with the zoo), and as we worked our way down toward the tour area, we stopped to ride a carousel (again, the 3 for 1 passes got us on this for free instead of having to pay a few dollars for it) and visit the discovery area, where they had a place for the adults to sit while the kids played with puzzles, toys, puppets, paper and crayons, etc, all under a nice, cool awning. The kids get to do that sort of thing fairly often when we're home, too, but we didn't mind taking a break. *grin*
We ended up taking the "short" way down to the bus tour, which involved a platform with an elevator to take us down about 30 feet in elevation. I was starting to realize how much bigger than the zoo this park was. We passed a bright yellow hot-air balloon that we thought about riding (it would have cost us about $70 for the whole family for a 4 or 5 minute ride, though), and made our way to the bus area. Once we were loaded on, we discovered that what makes the Wild Animal Park so different from the zoo is that they have large, multi-acre exhibits based on environment rather than animals. We saw the savanna area mostly, which had at least 10 different groups of animals all living together in the same exhibit. We saw a herd of antelope decide to take off running down one long hill and up another, all in unison. We saw two different kinds of rhinoceroses, about 10 giraffes, including a few babies, lots of antelope, gazelles, etc, and learned a lot about them from the tour guide. The tour guides sure seem to know their stuff, as they can tell us all about the animal's native behaviors, the status of their native environments as concerns habitat loss, and the names of most of the animals that live there.
We also saw several people who had paid (a lot) more money to either tour these various large exhibits on Segway scooters with off road tires or in a large, safari like pickup truck that drove inside the exhibit itself for extreme close up pictures.
These large exhibits are kind of a cross between a zoo and an actual safari. The animals are enclosed and (relatively) nearby, as with a zoo, but they are behaving as if they were in the wild and interacting with other animals, as with a safari. It was fascinating to me. I think the kids did a good job to not complain too much about how long it took. *grin*
After the bus tour, we made sure to see the elephants (and zoo keeper), the lions (the alpha male was sitting on top of a broken down jeep under a tree near the front of the exhibit), and we even managed to run across some native deer on our way back up that had made it into the park. We ate lunch at one of the restaurants (hot dogs and somewhat fancy sandwiches with the trimmings for nearly the cost of the balloon ride), stopped at an oasis that had water spraying out of kid friendly statues to help cool you down, and worked our way back up toward the front.
We stopped at a petting area, where my daughter very carefully made sure to pet every single specimin in the area, visited the discovery area again, where we had a lovely conversation with the employee on duty who complimented our kids highly (that always makes a parent feel good) and discussed our church (specifically, the San Diego Temple, which she had heard was closed for a while), and rode the carousel a few more times.
We learned that our good preparation of bringing water bottles that had been frozen overnight was even better when you remembered to do it. I guess our day off had caused us to forget our preparations.
I'm learning now, too, that without pictures, some of the specifics of the memories are fading kind of quickly (of course, the week that we've been back has been VERY hectic, so that contributes too).
In the end, I decided that the Wild Animal Park was worth visiting, but I don't know that I would want to go again with small children because they don't have the patience to enjoy the uniqueness of this attraction. At least, my kids don't seem to have that kind of patience.
More to come later.
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