Spring Break Vacation = San Diego Day 1

Grant is the biggest animal lover I know.  As I drive him to school in the morning, he talks to the dogs being walked by their owners.  The dogs can't hear him but he just coos and tells them how cute they are anyway. It was easy to decide to take a family vacation to Sea World.  Grant would have lots of opportunities to talk to all kinds of animals and give them some love.

We left for our trip Sunday, March 10th.  After we checked into the Holiday Inn Expression on Mission Bay, we went on a short drive up the I-5 to the San Diego Temple.

 The temple looks like a castle from a popular Disney movie.

Brent & Grant had fun using my new zooming lens on my camera to see who could get the best up close picture of Angel Moroni.  They all turned out pretty good.  I'm not sure who took this one.

 Grant & his Mom.  (He turns 16 in eleven days.)

My sweetheart & I.

After we left the San Diego Temple, we headed to Old Town San Diego.  The church has a historic display there dedicated to the Mormon Battalion.  The presentation is hands on.  All of the visitors become members of the battalion.  We then go through different parts of the building to watch videos and become part of their trek from Iowa to California.  It was worth it to visit this landmark.

(free pictures for all Battalion members)

We walked around Old Town San Diego for a while.  There was lots to see, lots of people doing what we were doing, and we ended up getting really hungry.  Since the weather was cooling off, I didn't want to eat outdoors.  This began our adventure of trying to find a Mexican food restaurant.  The adventure wasn't too successful.  We drove around blindly through the neighborhoods not finding anything appealing.  We then decided to go to the boardwalk by the beach to see what we could eat there.  Unfortunately, when we arrived at the beach, we immediately became distracted by the ocean.  The search for food was postponed. 

 The beach at Mission Bay was littered with kelp.  There was tons of kelp washed up along the shoreline. 

 Grant played in the kelp. He is such a curious kid.  He had to touch it, pull it apart, see what was under it and jump on it.  It was like a new toy!

The most interesting part of the kelp was the round air filled growths on the stems.  There is nothing inside of them.  When the kelp is growing, these "air pockets" help the kelp float up/grow up toward the top of the water.

Sea gulls were EVERYWHERE!  They are pretty good in size and aren't intimidated by people.  

 Brent at the beach.

 The breeze from the sea made it a bit chilly for me.  I was back in the car long before Brent & Grant were done playing in the sand.

Although we were still hungry for dinner, Brent had to stay until he had the perfect picture of the sunset.  He did a pretty good job!