June 21, 2011

Today’s Sponsor: San Diego County Fair

Start/End: San Diego, CA
Miles Driven: 30 or so

We realized that the San Diego County Fair was going on while we were in town, and the kids haven’t ever been to a fair, so we figured we’d take a day and do the fair thing. The weather was good for it, it was about 75 and overcast until early afternoon.

We toured the art exhibits a bit, and I found my favorite one…

The kids saw one of those reverse bungee jump things, so we got them strapped into one and watched them bounce around a lot.

There was a rock wall nearby, so each kid took a stab at that, then they went and rode one of those giant plastic slide things.

The kids and I rode a roller coaster, and I video’d our reactions as we rode it. That’s embedded in the video linked below. Then stumbled upon what is either a culinary miracle or abomination: a chocolate dipped pickle. Of course I had to have one. It wasn’t bad, believe it or not. It wasn’t good, either – not like chocolate covered bacon. The brine of the pickle totally overpowered the chocolate.

The theme of the fair was “Race to the Fair”, and as such there were quite a few car exhibits. There was a beautiful 57 Chevy that reminded me a lot of one my friend had in high school. Spent a lot of time under the hood of that car…

We finished off the day with dinner at In-N-Out, and then we played video games on the iPad with it hooked to the flat panel TV in the room. Another great day!

June 20,2011

Today’s Sponsor: USS Dolphin

Start/End: San Diego, CA
Miles Traveled: 30 or so

Today was our first full day in San Diego, and after a breakfast of a bagel and bacon (mmmm bacon) we headed up to our old college, San Diego State University. Quite a lot has changed in nearly 20 years – but a lot was the same, too.

We wandered the old science and engineering areas, as that was Kelly’s major and mine, respectfully. One of the more disconcerting things to see was the fact that there was a building labeled “Industrial Technology” – that was my major until it was eliminated due to budget cuts in 1994. They must have reinstated it at some point – wonder if my units would transfer back? Not that I’m doing anything remotely similar now…

After a lunch at the local mall, we headed downtown to Harbor Drive and the Maritime Museum. Even though we lived in San Diego for five years, we never checked out the Maritime Museum, so we took the opportunity to see it. Glad we did. The first exhibit is a 50s era sub, the USS Dolphin.

Apparently the Dolphin was the deepest diving “conventional” sub. That tidbit of trivia didn’t make much difference to Conner, who was pretending to sink ships in the harbor…

Another cool thing was looking across the harbor and seeing the USS Carl Vinson tied up over at Coronado Island. Big ship, that one…

Another interesting ship at the Maritime Museum is an old Soviet sub – a Foxtrot-class, if I remember correctly. Was an interesting contrast to see the American vs. Russian construction, and seeing Cyrillic everywhere was just eerie.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Master and Commander”, there’s a ship there that was used in the filming of that movie – the HMS Surprise. Very impressive looking, until you got below decks, where there was little actually finished and outfitted.

The crown jewel of the museum’s collection is the Star of India, though. She’s a iron hulled sailing ship, and kept in seaworthy condition. The ship was featured in an episode of Dirty Jobs, too, so Conner was all over that.

We wound up the day back at the pool, where I tossed the kids around some and shot more video. In all, a great day. :).

June 19, 2011

Today’s Sponsor: Humphrey’s Half Moon Inn, San Diego

Start: Santa Clarita, CA
End: San Diego, CA
Miles Driven: 150

We kicked off the day with breakfast at the La Quinta Inn in Santa Clarita. There’s nothing quite like unlimited instant self-serve waffles. Something about pouring the stuff in the iron and flipping it over makes the waffles unlike any other.

We had an unusual treat. Turns out through a weird coincidence some of our friends stayed the night in the hotel as they were passing through too! So we had breakfast with them and their kids – was great for all our kids to sit at the same table and beat on one another. :)

Had a nice drive from Santa Clarita down to San Diego. Brought back a lot of memories of college trips. It was nice to see the San Onofre nuclear plant again (always liked the look of those buildings - yes, I’m 12 years old.)

We made it to Humphrey’s Half Moon Inn on Shelter Island at about 2pm. We got groceries and got situated, then walked around the place. It’s right on the water, with a marina attached to it. There’s a koi pond and a small stage where they have concerts as well.

We then hung out at the pool for the rest of the day. I got a waterproof iPhone case for this trip (the InnoPocket Amphibian) so I shot some underwater video. Wound up running the thing through iMovie on the iPhone. Check it out …

We closed out the day by cooking pizza in the room and enjoying some movies on the TV. In all, a great day, and a nice way to spend Father’s Day. :)

6/18/2011

Today’s Sponsor: Islands Restaurant

Start: Gilroy, CA
End: Santa Clarita, CA
Miles Driven: 280

And we’re off! Summer Vacation 2011 is officially underway. We left Gilroy around noon and didn’t get too far before we stopped to eat – we made it about 10 miles and stopped at Casa de Fruta for lunch.

After lunch, we continued on down I-5 toward Southern California. Turns out there’s a lot of construction going on down around Taft, and I-5 is necked down into one lane with crazy delays, so we jumped onto Highway 46, then got onto Highway 99. That wound up costing us about 25 miles but saved a bunch of time from sitting in traffic. Thank you, BlackBerry Traffic, for the traffic alert!

We pulled into the La Quinta Inn in Santa Clarita about 5:30, just in time for dinner. Turns out one of our favorite restaurants was just up the road, so we headed to the Valencia Mall and nommed at Islands Restaurant.

The food, as always, was totally great. Awesome burgers and we all got our favorite treats – I had a frozen cola lime ice, and Gillian got a virgin Mai Tai (I have no idea where she picked that up, honest!)

Since we were at the mall, and it was still pretty early, we decided to catch the new Green Lantern flick. After wandering the mall for about a half hour on foot, we finally figured out that the movie theater was off-premise, so walked the couple blocks to the movie. That turned out to be a pretty good thing, as we all could have used the exercise from the crazy huge burgers that Islands makes. :)

The movie wasn’t too horrible, all things considered. It took a couple liberties from the Green Lantern comic I remember as a kid, but they were reasonable and didn’t make me go WTF through the whole movie. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively were fun to watch as Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris, and the supporting cast did a good job holding the rest of the film together. It’s not a life changing movie, but it’s worth some time on a Friday night.

Next up, we continue on to San Diego. More to come….

I think I got the blog issues whipped into shape. Sure hope I did. Here’s a test pic to see if this is working like it should.

You should see a Camaro there. Vroom.