This weekend was our early birthday / pre-deployment, six years of marriage trip to
Coronado Island.
It took me a little while to stop crying after we dropped them off. Erik was of coarse fine, he had a new friend and was playing within seconds of walking in the door. Emily had found the kittens, and she was smitten. (Smitten...with the kitten...hehehe) Then, of coarse, RIIIGHT when we were about to walk out the door tear free....the kitten had had enough and scratched her. Bring on the tears, and crying for mommy. And, crying...for mommy. A quick hug and making sure no arteries were severed...and we went out the door...I cried for a while. Got it together while we set the gps for Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. I held back the tears long enough to call and make sure my baby girl wasn't crying any more. She was fine a few nano seconds after I went out the door.
Along the way we got hungry so we pulled off the road. A few wrong turns later and we ended up at Hanson's Market. WARNING: If you are environmentally sensitive this next sentence might offend you, overt your eyes. It was a nice little organic hippie joint.
We got some of the tastiest sammies ever. I was almost converted! lol jk jk. But seriously, delicioso!
Traffic wasn't too terrible, and we arrive at the barracks....(top picture)
TOTALLY kidding! But that was the back side! We stayed in billeting. It was pretty decent.
We checked in, got refreshed and decided to check out the island. We found a candy shop. I got about 15
gummy bears, Barry got...A CHOCOLATE DIPPED TWINKIE. I know. Ewww.
We walked past Hotel Del Coronado, and a flower stand that had a huge selection of my favorite flower...No, Barry did NOT buy me one. :(
As you can see, I forgave him. ;)
After exploring for a while we went down to the Ferry Landing to check about taking the Ferry to San Diego in the morning. Then we got hungry for dinner and went to the Coronado Brewing Company for dinner. It was a decent wait but WELL worth it! Barry got fish and chips, but he really should have ordered chicken and garlic pizza. Because after I ate dinner, and had MORE than HALF left and the waitress went to bring me a pizza box. When she returned only a few minutes later, Barry had taste tested 3 pieces of my left overs. lol In his defense, it was really good. Oh, and if you're wondering why barry looks like Kermit the Frog, he is insecure about what he thinks is a double chin..this was one of like 10 photos.
After Dinner we took a walk on the beach and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. Stole a few kisses, and took a picture under a street lamp. A nice photog stranger walked by and offered to take our photo for us. She saw the play back and was disgusted by the yellow tint. So, she kindly pointed out that my white balance was probably not set correctly (duh...it was on auto, it was dark by then and I hadnt felt like messing with manual settings for a quick selfie.) So, she took the liberty to start adjusting my settings. Or trying to, because like I already said it was on auto. I nicely took my camera, said thanks but that will do (deleted the picture because she couldnt frame a picture if she were in Michaels with a 99% off coupon!) and kept my yellow selfie. What I WANTED to do was say, "Bitch please! Who do you think you are? Adjusting another photographers camera!?" PSHT!
We went back to the hotel room and had a few white gummy bears. (No, not the ones I had bought earlier. Those were LONG gone! It's a drink. 1 part cherry vodka, 1 part peach schnapps, pineapple juice and sprite. Delicious. We attempted to play cards but soon decided that showers and t.v. and sleep sounded better on a kid-less Friday night; at 9:30pm. Don't judge us. We set our alarms for 7:15am, enough time to get up, get breakfast, and catch the 9:30am ferry to San Diego Broadway Pier.
We stopped at a fancy bagel place where they had every type of bagel ever made with tons of breakfast sandwich options and combinations of cream cheese, sauces and concoctions. Barry ordered a Garlic Bagel Breakfast egg, bacon something with orange juice so expensive that I'm sure they had Jesus out back making it from water....And that is the Biblical Jesus. Not Jesus in the east LA sense. I thought to my self...self, you're in a shop, where you can get any type of bagel your little heart can handle (and all the carbs to go with) so I orded.....A plain bagel, toasted, with plain cream cheese. And a house coffee. Profound. I KNOW! Hey, don't fix what isn't broken. lol.
We set out for the ferry landing. Boarded out ferry boat and set sail for the mainland. People on Coronado Island actually call it that. I laugh. First up on the docket after arriving on dry land after those many(15) moments out at sea(in the bay); was the USS Midway Tour. This was something Barry picked. I thought, hey, I'm a good military wife, I'm all for learning some history and getting an appreciation for a different branch and their operations. Let me take one minute to tell you that when we were in longbeach we went on a Russian submarine that is floating next to the Queen Mary. I decided right then and there two things. 1. I am claustrophobic, and 2. That there was NO way I could ever have served in the Navy (incase anyone was wondering if I could have ever served in the Navy). I do NOT like the idea of being under water, or in confined spaces.
Flash back to the future, here I am on the USS Midway. climbing up and down very narrow, very vertical stairways following a bunch of other mouth breathing tourists around the bowels of a ship breathing recirculated air. In the beginning of the tour they give you a headset attached to a wireless thingy that when you press the corresponding numbers will rattle off some interesting facts and stories about which part of the ship you are now in. The only thing I could think of was, breathe in, breathe out, don't freak out on these people behind you, bumping into your backpack as you try to graciously traverse these stairs that I'm 100000% positive, have claimed many lives, it wont help, they don't even speak english. We see the ship, we head up top to see the planes, jets, helicopters, whatever. Hallelujah, sunshine and fresh air. Let's get the Hell off this ship. Meanwhile somewhere in there I threw Barry in the BRIGG for suggesting we enter the depths of hell...
We finally made it back to dry land. We grabbed lunch at a local deli type place. I felt hungover so I ordered a hot dog and fries and a mikes hard lemonade to calm my nerves. The "hot dog" should have been called the hot behemoth. It was huge, and salty. I SOOO did not eat that. I am not a huge fan of hot dogs, I eat them once a century or so. Now I will make it once a lifetime. So a full morning of exercising, plus a mikes hard lemonade on a now empty stomach, a few fries....I was buzzed. Barry finished his behemoth and we set out to see if we could take public transportation to La Jolla to see the tide pools. We walked across the street to see about the trolley rounds. Yeah, also incase you are wondering ( if you are a person who wonders a lot, keep reading my blog) it costs $38 PER PERSON for a trolley ticket. And it only makes like 4 stops....the furthest of which would have only brought us as far as old town in which we would have to buy ANOTHER trolley ticket to go from there to La Jolla or Mission Beach. NO THANKS! We saw a cab across the street and asked what the fare would be from where we were to Mission Beach. $25, plus tip, each way. Around $60ish dollars. To go 7.8 miles. We decided to take our roundtrip ticket and go BACK to the island and grab our car and drive there ourselves. HAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHA
NOW I see why it is so expensive!
We were stuck in traffic foooooorrrrreeeeeevvvvvveeeerrrrrr. (said in a sandlot voice)
Only to get there and realize there was litterally NO WHERE to park for at least 2 miles. We said, lets go to Point Loma and see the Cabrillo National Monumet and Tide Pools instead. We got there, got in free (thank you military discount that had saved us a LOT of $money already this weekend).
We make our way down to the tide pool areas and we start seeing signs. 'Are Closes at 4:30pm'.
It was 4:17pm... ARE YOU FREAKEN KIDDING ME!?! OH ! And there was NO where to park! BAHHH!!! I was about to go bat shit crazy on someone. We had set out around noon on our quest to find tide pools. BUT we finally were matched against someone who had lost their will to live, won the knife fights and was VICTORIOUSLY took our rightful parking spot! (In reality, other people were taking the signs seriously and started to leave).
We pull into the parking space and my message indicator on my phone goes off. I wanted to make sure the kids were okay so I checked it. It was not from the babysitter, it was from Verizon.
"Welcome to Mexico! Any calls, texts, or data used or made from outside of the USA are subject to roaming fees, would you like to accept these fees?"
HELL NO! I'm IN AMERICA!
Apparently we were close enough to a mexican cell tower that toto thought we weren't in Kansas anymore.
We did some exploring in the tide pools, saw lots of hermit crab, a few other types of crab, rock fish, and lots of other small sea creatures.
(Barry in a cave)
(Love birds NOT in Mexico)
( C is for Crab)
A nice lady sitting on a rock, looking at the ocean, alone.
Point Loma something something base housing (must be a rough life)
Cabrillo National Cemetary
There is also a cool 1 minute video barry took underwater in one of the tide pools that I will post later.
After this we went back to the Island. On the way we saw that traffic on the bridge in the opposite direction was at a standstill due to a 3 car accident. The cars were backed up on the ENTIRE length of the bridge, and ALL the way onto the island and ALL the way down Orange street (the main road)
Here is a view of the bridge from our hotel room, this PLUS MILES on the island were not moving.
Luckily like I said it was in the opposite direction. Unluckily however we could not get to albertsons to buy dinner. So we paid a zillion more dollars and shopped at Vons. We had a nice picnic on the beach on the naval base. We had cheese, crackers, meat and grapes. And Milano Cookies and coffee for dessert. We sat and looked out at the ocean and saw DOLPHINS jumping just off shore!! How exciting! Of coarse when I got out my camera I was too slow to capture the split second appearance.
What a nice way to end a great weekend!
The next morning we shopped for souvenirs for the kiddos
and headed back to Santa Clarita to pick them up!
The GPS originally said 2 hours and 45 mins...
Yeah right! We got on the road at 10:50am. Traffic on the I-5 was stop and go and stop, stop stop some more, the whole way. We finally arrived around 2:45pm. I have never been happier to see my kids' little faces!!! I miss them SOOO very much!
They both like the shirt/sweatshirt they got.
We are all glad to be HOME & TOGETHER.
The rest of the week has been spent getting Erik ready to start Kindergarten on Wednesday.
Something tells me that will begin a weekly entry of Tales from the Kinder Class Room...
