Journey to Point Loma, La Jolla, and the San Diego Zoo

On Tuesday, August 5th, Laura, McKenna and I took in some of the sights along the San Diego coast, starting with the tidepools at Point Loma. This was the second time that I had been to the tidepools, but the first was a while back, on the day of Mark and Margo’s wedding. The tide on that day was really low, lower than on this more recent trip, which meant that more of the rocks in the ocean were exposed. Even with a higher low tide, there were still lots of fantastic rocks to see. Here is our photographic study of the tidepools.

Woman and bird with awesome rock

Man and child with awesome rock

Woman and child with awesome rock

People on awesome rocks

Woman on awesome rock

Child presenting awesome rocks

Above the tidepools, there’s a visitor center with great views of San Diego harbor and the city.

It was there that we discovered a sure-fire way to get McKenna to smile in a picture – tap into her love of herself by taking selfies. So we took many at Point Loma.

Apparently, some kind of narcissistic instinct kicks in when McKenna can see herself on the phone screen, triggering a smile.

We moved on to La Jolla and stopped for a late afternoon snack at George’s at the Cove.

After searching for a parking spot in La Jolla, everyone needed a drink.

The view was great; a few of our fellow patrons were less great.

Not pictured: the couple cheating on their spouses who were discussing their infidelities at volumes even higher than those used by Laura.

By that time, McKenna had had enough of walking along the ocean without going in the water and insisted that we move closer.

That might be close enough…

THIS ROCK IS SINKING!!!

The tide was coming in by that time, and after a rogue wave soaked Laura and almost got me and my camera, we decided to go to Seal Rock.

Since there were only two seals at Seal Rock, here is a picture of the water.

We capped the day off with some gelato, only after convincing McKenna, who was upset that we were not stopping for ice cream, that gelato was an ice cream-like substance which she would enjoy.

Gelato does seem to melt a bit faster though…

On Wednesday, we joined up with Margo, Miles, Drew, and Julia to see the famous San Diego Zoo. Before going to the zoo, Laura and I took our Ford Fiesta rental car back to Fox Rental Cars because it had started shuddering during acceleration like it was going to fly apart. Trading in the car was an ordeal that went something like this:

Laura waited on hold with Fox for 25 minutes. When Laura is put on hold for this type of thing, her rage builds at an exponential rate.

Laura finally got through to a human and was told that a car would not be ready until 11am (it was now 9:15). Since Laura had waited on hold until her rage level was at Defcon 2, her response was, “I will be there at ten, and you will have a car ready.” Click.
We arrived at the car rental place at ten. Miraculously, there was a car ready. Even better, the new car was an actual compact car, not a fake compact that is actually a subcompact like our previous car, the Fiesta. Since the exchange of cars was spur of the moment and we weren’t expecting to have to switch cars until the following Monday, we had to quickly throw everything from the Fiesta into the new car, including some groceries, McKenna’s car seat, and miscellaneous cables.
As we were checking out at the gate, the attendant revealed that our new car was due for maintanence and that we would have to switch to another car. Laura’s head nearly exploded. Adding to the stress was the fact that our maintanence-bound car was now blocking the gate with all of our stuff in it.
Put on high alert by the fact that Laura’s reddened face was radiating the heat of a thousand suns, another Fox employee quickly brought our new car out, which was an even larger class of car, a Toyota Camry. Operating like a pit crew team, Laura and I switched the car seat, cables, and groceries to the new car.

Somehow, we made it to the zoo anyway.

The San Diego Zoo is amazing, but we initially made the strategic error of only picking up one map of the zoo, which immediately became an object for Miles and Drew to fight over. The crisis was averted when a zoo employee provided a second map, forcing the children to use their imaginations to invent another reason to fight.