Entry for August 05, 2006

Another scorcing day in McAllen, Texas today makes me miss San Diego, CA from where we returned after 5 days of vacation this week.  What a great place!  To say the weather is perfect doesn’t do it justice.  It was July 31- Aug 2 and the temperature was about 70, every day, all day and all night.  Never really hot (except in the direct sunshine) and never cold, even when it rained a little. 

We stayed on Coronado Island which was a spectacular place.  As a friend said, they don’t put permanent military bases in bad spots.  The North Island NAS is there and the planes and helicopters go right over the bay.  Also the Naval Amphibious Base (home of the SEALS) is on the south side.  I saw a training group of Seals running along the beach.  They were running in shorts and combat boots.  There was a group of them together and then a line of the slower runners single file.  Following were two support vehicles (pleased to see there is awareness of injury).  After they stopped running they jumped in the water in their clothes and got wet enough to cool down, then ran back.  They were all about mid-20s and in good shape (predominately shirtless, 10% tattooed, a bit older and bigger than I would have guessed).

I played 18 holes of golf at Torrey Pines (North Course) which I would say is the best course I have ever played, top to bottom.  It costs $75 to play and that was a bargain.  I had to arrive at 6:15 a.m. to play and that was OK.  It rained a few holes but that didn’t stop me.  Great ocean views and a spectacular piece of land. 

I also played at the Coronado golf course which was quite the deal for $13.  It is right on the bay under the bridge.  Beautiful views and the course was very challenging as well.  Longer than it looked.

We went to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park (breeding grounds for the zoo.).  The Zoo was terrific, with panda bears, lions and tigers (no ligers!), hippos, rhinos, all sorts of birds and pigs, etc.  We really enjoyed it.  Lots of room for the animals and surprisingly not overly commercialized.  The Wild Animal Park reminded me of Disney’s Animal Kingdom (more commercialized, more touristy) but still OK.  Sea World was its usual good self and they also had a Cirque du Soleil-type act that was worth the price of admission.  Of course the Shamu show was excellent.

We rented a Dodge Charger R/T Hemi and that was a very large and powerful car to cruise around in.   It was like a less expensive version of Dr. G’s Mercedes S 65 AMG in terms of room and power, so when you can compare a $30K car to a $170K car, that is good company.  Susan and Sarah liked it also, so… who knows?

If you go, be sure to try Moo Time Ice Cream in Coronado.  There was a line out the door every night and for good reason.  Very tasty!

Pictures to follow.