San Diego.... Time to go...

 

As with our other adventures, the inevitable end came. On the final morning we went for a walk along the beach before leaving for the airport.

I can't speak highly enough about San Diego from a tourist perspective. We were there for a week and managed to do something completely different (and fun) each day. The food was outstanding, particularly the seafood, and the service across the board was excellent. The beaches are nice even if the water was a bit cold when we were there, and the weather was fantastic.

If you get a chance to go to San Diego, jump at it because it's a wonderful part of the world.

The sun goes down on yet another wonderful North American adventure. Hopefully we'll come back to San Diego soon.

Oceanside

After five days in San Diego, we had managedto do something completely different every day. We were a bit at odds to work out what to do on our last full day in San Diego. We'd already done all the big tourist things and had run out of ideas to some extent.

The only thing that really looked like a plan was to take the Coaster (above) to Oceanside. The trip takes around an hour each way and runs from downtown San Diego to the northern beach township of Oceanside.

 

It's quite a nice run along the coast stopping at Sorento Valley and a number of beach side communities along the way. The Pacific Surfliner follows the same route but continues on to Los Angeles and beyond. It would be a great way to see the California coastline.

We arrived at Oceanside after an hour traveling through some really nice scenery. Unfortunately it was a bit of an anti-climax. There just wasn't much there. The beach was nice, but there wasn't much else. We had planned to have lunch when we arrived, but the only options we could find were a very small Mackas (they say the smallest in the world??) and a place right out at the end of the pier called Ruby's.

 

Maybe there was something down at the other end of the beach but after a dodgy experience with the public "facilities" by Kerri, we decided to grab some Mackas and high tail it.
In hind sight we should have hopped off the train a stop earlier at Carlsbad where there seemed to be a quaint little beach side community that was much more established than Oceanside. Oh well, we weren't to know. The train trip was nice at least.

San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park

San Diego Zoo

Today was the day to visit the world famous San Diego Zoo. It's quite the place, but not awesome (yet). I was very impressed by a fair bit of it. There's clearly been many decades of planting of trees and plants. In more recent times there has been a concerted effort to upgrade the exhibits to modern, animal friendly standards. The new work is really well done. They're still working on upgrading the rest. In the mean time, the larger animals are rotated with the ones out at the Wild Animal Park out of the city. That is an open plains zoo like the Western Plains Zoo in Victoria, but apparently on a bigger scale with many more animals. We didn't get time to get out to that one. So at least the big cats and other animals don't spend too much time in the old style cramped little cages that always distress me (& no doubt the animals). I give a lot of credit to the San Diego Zoo for the work they do in conjunction with other zoos around the world in preservation of endangered and non-endangered animal species. (I know! Bloody tree hugger. Whatever!) As an aside, most of the planted vegetation at the zoo and much of San Diego is actually made up of Australian native plants! Apparently our plants are the only ones that can survive in the arid climate of San Diego. Who would have thought?

 

Balboa Park

Around midday we'd "done" the zoo and headed into the neighboring Balboa Park. (The zoo is actually part of Balboa park). Balboa Park is a beautiful place with many museum and arts buildings along with a number of really nice theme gardens and parks. We were pleasantly surprised when we started looking around. I can't really say much about it and the best way to appreciate and understand what it's about it to go there. Below are some photos of this lovely and vast park.

Back at Pacific Beach we enjoyed another spectacular sunset.

La Jolla and Coronado Beach

La Jolla

Today we headed to La Jolla (La Hoy-ya), to the north of Pacific Beach. It's where the richo snooty types live. I guess it's a bit like Palm Beach in Sydney. There was even a Bugatti Verron in a luxury car show room. Our intention was to have a look around and go to the Birch Aquarium.
We headed to the Aquarium first. It wasn't too bad but there were loads of school kids on an excursion that made it a complete nightmare. There was a nice view of La Jolla (set on the far peninsular above) from the front of the touch pools.

Having been through the La Jolla township on the way to the aquarium, we figured that it was too spread out and we didn't really have much idea what was there. We revised our plan was to head to Old Town for lunch and have a nosey around there. During our nosey we found a tourist trolley tour bus that runs from Old Town to the city to Coronado, back through the city and then Old town. It was early in the afternoon, so were figured why not?

Hotel Del Coronado

The trolley bus we hopped on cruised through the downtown area and over the bridge to Coronado Island.

The big attraction with the island is the Hotel Del Coronado. It's quite the sight and the main building structure is made entirely out of timber. It's a very extravagant place and costs a bomb to stay there.

It looks nice with a beautiful beach in front but don't be fooled. The final approach path for the air base runs right along that pristine beach. When we arrived, two F-18 Hornets banked right in front of the hotel to line up their landing. It was exciting for me, but I don't know what the beach goers and hotel guests thought.

The private houses on the island have very interesting architecture I'm guessing because the local by-laws prevent two houses being the same anywhere on the island. Cool! Calgary should learn from them instead of building thousands of identical little boxes.

Crystal Pier. 

 

I probably should make a comment about Crystal Pier.
The little buildings on the pier in fact make up a hotel. The general public are allowed out on the pier between 8.30am and half an hour after sunset. I think it is a nice touch and fits in with the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of Pacific Beach.

 

 

San Diego Bay Cruise and USS Midway Museum

After our day at Seaworld, our next day plan was a San Diego Bay cruise followed by a trip to the USS Midway museum.

San Diego Bay

 

San Diego Bay is dominated by the US military, but there is also a large civilian influence including the famous San Diego Yacht Club. In fact there were two ex-America's Cup Yachts moored next to where our cruise boat left from. The two yachts were Liberty, that lost to Australia II back in 1982, and Stars and Stripes that won it back (although by then nobody except the Kiwis actually cared about the America's cup).

 

The military have many wharves and bases around the bay. This one was obviously a Navy Seal training area.
These Navy Seals didn't look like they were training very hard.

 

The USS Ronald Reagan

 

Just after we'd seen the 'Navy Seals', we were very lucky to be treated to something very special. The USS Ronald Reagan, designated CVN-76, is the newest and biggest military ship in the world. It's based in San Diego with it's sister ship the USS Nimitz (CVN-68). These ships are generally away on exercises for 4 weeks at a time (the Nimitz is currently on deployment in the Persian Gulf for 6 months) so to be on the bay cruise right when the Ronald Reagan was entering port was an incredible fluke.
These huge ships are amazing. They tower over anything getting around and carry 6500 crew! They are faster than anything else the navy has but the US military are not prepared to say how fast. The "N" in the designation means nuclear powered. They don't need to re-fuel for 30 years! It's only the jets and the people that need re-fueling.
I saw either this one or one of it's sister Nimitz class Aircraft Carriers off Fremantle a couple of years ago. Getting this close really put it into perspective.

Coronado Air Base

 

San Diego isn't just a Naval base. The Marines have a huge presence and San Diego is one of the main places where the US trains their Navy Seals (the equivalent of Australia's SAS unit).

The aircraft involved in these groups need somewhere to land so there's a military air base on Coronado Island to accommodate anything from jet fighters and helicopters to the huge C-5 Galaxy transports. NATO even had an E-3 AWACS visiting (below).

There's also a re-furb shop along the waterfront of the air base where they clean up decommissioned aircraft for display on the USS Midway (more on that later).

 

 

I'm a bit of an aircraft tragic and to see aircraft carriers and a bunch of military planes was something of a treat.

Coronado Wharf

The San Diego Bay cruise is actually 2 cruises. You can do the north harbour, the south harbour or 2 hour full bay cruise. The full bay cruise is just the other two run consecutively. The northern cruise takes in the San Diego Yacht club, the submarine base, the bay entrance, the air base and the aircraft carrier base. The southern bay cruise begins by heading straight across the bay toward the Coronado wharf (above). It marks the beginning of the civilian part of Coronado Island. Technically it isn't an island because there's a narrow spit of land that connects it to the mainland down near Tijuana.

South Bay

Not far past the wharf we reached the San Diego Bridge (above). It's not as famous or as aesthetically pleasing as the Golden Gate bridge in SFO, but it's impressive in its own way. The military insisted that the city build a bridge high enough to drive their biggest ships (their carriers) under the bridge. Without boring you with engineering jargon, thanks to the height, the bridge needs to be curved as it crosses the bay.

Painting it blue makes it a little more aesthetically pleasing, but it's pretty much a functional bridge.

Once you go south of the bridge, you're back in military territory. The Coronado side is the main training area and barracks for the marines and Navy Seals. The mainland side is the San Diego Navy Base. I've never seen so many war ships in one place. There were Destroyers (above), Frigates, Cruisers (below) and Hospital ships.

 

There were also Amphibious Assault Ships (AAS) (above), which I'd never even heard of before. They look like aircraft carriers and are nearly as big. They do have a landing deck on the top like carriers, but it's for helicopters or short take off and land (STOL) aircraft (like the V-22 Osprey) not for jets. These ships are actually run by the marines. They carry troupes, aircraft and smaller landing/assault ships. Yet another deadly asset in the US arsenal.

 

Even the US Coast Guard dock one of their big clippers there (above). That ship puts most of the ships in the Australian Navy to shame.

 

Close in to the bridge was a large civilian run warship refitting dock (General Dynamics I think). They have quite the operation there as well.

The return journey of the South Bay cruise took us back alongside the naval base and under the bridge, then along the city centre waterfront. Near the north end of the waterfront sits the Seaport Village (above). It's a collection of buildings constructed to be like the old seaport village. We found out late in the afternoon that it's really just a bunch of shops and small restaurants. Some of the shops weren't too bad. Kerri bought a new hat and I bought a couple of new shirts.
Wyland has his main gallery there with a really persistent salesman. One day I may actually buy some of Wyland's stuff. it is an expensive habit though. The sculpture that I really like would be close to $4500 USD by the time I had it shipped to Oz.

The USS Midway Museum

The USS Midway is the longest serving Carrier in the US Navy and served in WWII, Vietnam and Desert Storm. It was decommissioned in 1992 and is now a floating museum.
After our bay cruise, we headed to the Midway Museum for a look. It was very interesting.

 

You can look over the, hanger deck, and the first two floors below the hanger deck. You can also go up into the air control tower and the bridge

 

They allow about 15 people at a time up into Air Control. As you would expect, it has a great outlook forward to the and aft to the Landing Deck.
The guy who is in charge of flight ops is called the "Boss". There's also a 2nd in command called the Mini Boss. Of course you can guess who's chair Kez made a be-line for (above).

We also had a look on the bridge (that's the place where the big knob drives the ship from). The Captain also has a cushy chair. Once again, she couldn't help herself (above).

 

The big interest on the midway is the various retired aircraft on the deck of the carrier. You can even climb into a few of them. I hopped into the T-2 Buckeye (below), a trainer aircraft. There were all kinds of carrier based aircraft from helicopters to jets.

It was another entertaining day and we're excited to see what San Diego has to offer us tomorrow.