by I am listening to the hum of the air conditioner & Chloe’s snoring as I type my Good Mornings to you all. I can hear her now as she reads that statement “I don’t snore” but yah she does!
Here we are Day #3 – it seems that we have packed lots into 2 days already and this day will be th busiest yet – we are off today 1 at Seaworld – with a return on Friday we will get our money’s worth of the tickets I bought through AMA several months ago! Prior to looking Seaworld up on the web – I thought it was just an aquarium (www.seaworld.com) – we will see fish, etc. but there are rides, shows, shopping & a whole lotta other stuff to do! It’s over in the Mission Bay area and we are in Point Loma are in case there are map junkies out there wondering layout of the land.
Yesterday was packed with walking – in fact I brought my pedometer and with the exception of when we went to the pool & back which was probably another 500 steps we did 4,602 – OK not the 10,000 they recommend daily but let me tell you my feet felt like it was 46,000!
Our first stop was the USS Midway – the longest-serving aircraft carrier or fighting ship not sure, in the US fleet – 1945-1992. It is crazy big!! It is 1,001 feet long – and we walked it all. Took us 5 hours to do the self guided tour which included stopping for lunch and browsing the gift store. The crew population was around 4,500 and it has EVERYTHING! Even a dentist office which we were headed to when I dropped my camera down the steepest set of stairs I’ve ever encountered!! Here I’ll share the last picture…
My last thought was…I should put my camera (no strap to wrap around my wrist) in my pock……(DANG too late). So I’m cameraless until we hit Vegas as I remember a camera store which is right across the Strip from our Hotel.
Anyways we both found the USS Midway very interesting – it’s very true when they say they are a floating city – with its own ZIPCODE! Across the Bay were two other nuclear carriers (way better on fuel we learned) was the USS Regan and USS Vinson – interesting tidbit they have a safety barrier around them which when they are towed out to leave the bay opens up and allows them to be moved but does not allow other boats within a certain distance of them because in the 1990’s prior to this barrier another ship ran into one and blew a huge hole in the carrier killing 17 people! Safety is a good thing!!
After we left the USS Midway we wandered down the boardwalk to Seaport Village – it’s basically a mishmosh of quant little shops into little house like buildings. We were on a mission to find Seal Tours (www.sealtours.com) a hydraterra tour of the Bay area.
We climbed aboard with about 35 other people and one screaming child I was considering throwing over board. I felt sorry for Granma sitting behind me as the parents gave this one to her and kept the quiet one!! This was a 90 minute (60 on water, 30 on land) tour of the Point Loma/SD Bay area. We learned some interesting tidbits (Tuna industry was huge in the early 1900’s but died out when they put regulations, etc in – the last cannery closed in 1980’s but still stands empty) – (the Navy trains dolphins & seals to search out bombs underwater – they find them and alert the divers who go in and deactivate them – not sure how long ago but Animal Activists came over and cut the mesh that holds the dolphins in their pools at night – when the Navy trainers came back the next morning not one dolphin had left…why we asked….well they had been born there, are well fed, looked after, exercised and loved why leave?)
As we were about to leave the water (ok for those of you who didn’t look up the website to see this vehicle we were traveling in – it drivers on roads then drove right into the ocean where it deactivates the wheels and activates a propeller which drove us around in the Ocean – quite cool. We even were passed by this brute!!
Car carrier – which carries anywhere from 2,000 – 3,000 cars which our guide said it was sitting low in the water so probably had a good load on!
As we were leaving the water we got a good shot of a purple nettle jelly fish – about the size of a basket ball but I’m noting the program won’t let me upload anymore pictures so I’ll have to save that one for another day.
We grabbed a cab and were back at the Hotel around 7:30pm – pretty full day for us – went for a quick dip in the pool, ate and crashed by 10pm….and now ready to do it all over again!!
Ciao, S.