CA Family Road Trip: San Diego

The following day, we woke up in Anaheim and played in the pool for a while in the morning before we had to check out. Here's a video you can watch of Trevor and Charlie playing while I sunbathed. It's pretty cute, especially when Charlie thinks he's drowning from the giant splash hahaha!

Mid-day we drove south toward San Diego and made an afternoon stop at Mission Beach. It was such a gorgeous beach!

It was a little cold in the water (as usual) but Charlie just loved it until he got hit by a bigger wave, and then he wasn't so fond of the water anymore. He kept running back towards the bike path on shore and saying "Bye bye!". So, instead of doing much swimming, we decided to take a nice long walk up and down the beach to look at some of the cool beach houses lining the boardwalk.

Pardon my awkwardness in that family photo. Ahem. :) After strolling the beach, we drove about a mile north to this AMAZING little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place we found on Yelp. I think it's called La Perla Cocina. So hard to find, but totally worth it! MMMMmmmm! I want to go back to California just for that food!

After dinner and then dessert at Cold Stone, we drove to our motel for the night. Here's a phone shot of downtown San Diego at dusk:

Our motel that night was a little Days Inn in San Diego. It wasn't *nearly* as nice as the place we stayed at in Anaheim, but it was only for one night so I figured we'd survive. And we did. ;) The next day we got up early and headed over to the San Diego Zoo!

One of the first activities we did was visit the petting zoo. Charlie loved to touch the goats! There came a point where he tripped and fell in the dirt pee-and-poop-stained ground, and that's when I decided we were ALL done. Yuck!

Next we went to the insect house, which was really small, but by far my and Trevor's favorite attraction! Is there a zoo with JUST bugs?! We want to go there. :)

Here's one part of the beehive at the zoo. The cool part is this tunnel that's attached that allows the bees to exit the building and fly around the zoo pollenating all the plant life! Seriously so cool that the zoo has its own bee colony!

They also had a giant wall that showed an ant colony. This picture is above ground, but you could also see all the underground tunnels and chambers they had created!

From the insects, we ventured into the rest of the zoo. We did stop for a show at 11am that was pretty fun where they had sea lions, tropical birds, dogs, and other animals performing and doing tricks. I think Charlie enjoyed that! :) Afterward, for what seemed like an eternity, but was more like 3 hours, we tried to go to as many spots in the zoo as possible! Trevor and I became scientists for the day ;)

And we saw lots and lots of animals:

After the zoo, we packed up the car and Charlie quickly fell asleep for a late afternoon nap! We started our trek back towards Utah, with tentative plans to stay the night in Las Vegas, which turned into St. George, Cedar City, and then just going ALL the way back in one fell swoop. Ugh! 12+ hours of driving AFTER a full day at the zoo was pure torture, and I wasn't exactly happy with Trevor's decision-making at that point, but he did drive the whole time! I have never been happier to be home in my own bed!

It really was such a fabulous first family vacation! We look forward to planning and executing more successful vacations in the near future! :) I hope you have enjoyed seeing our pictures, even though they were mostly taken on my iPhone. Shame on me! Next time I'll break out the nice camera, promise!