Travel Journal - California, May 10-17

We left early Sunday morning with high hopes and lots of plans. The plan was to travel to Primm, NV the first day and spend the night at Buffalo Bills for a mere $15! The next morning, we were to travel to Wild Animal Park and check into the hotel for the night.....

Here's a picture of the kids, all happy and eager. They rode right next to each other the whole time and they got along pretty well, considering...
Here's a shot of us at Buffalo Bills. We were waiting to get on the monorail, just for the ride. It was really hot in Primm, NV.

Wild Animal Park http://www.sandiegozoo.org/wap/index.html was a great start to the week. We got there at about noon and enjoyed peaking at the animals. We were able to ride the merry-go-round with the animals that go up and down. Pretty exciting for the kids.

After Wild Animal Park, we went to the hotel to check in and eat dinner. We were able to pack enough food for the trip so that we didn't have to go out once. Yay for saving money, grrrr for the stress of planning it and pulling it off! After dinner, we loaded up in the car to search out a nearby beach. In fact, every night we loaded up in the car to explore. We borrowed a Garmin GPS so that we didn't get lost. Using the GPS saved us. Once we had established faith in it, we were off! It was AWESOME to have something telling you where to go, every turn of the way.

San Diego Zoo http://www.sandiegozoo.org/ was awesome. I don't know if I was more enthralled by the animals or the foliage. This place is humongus!
These are baby giraffes, so cute!
Jackson was pretty excited to see all the animals. He had a great time.

After San Diego Zoo, we ate dinner and went exploring. This time we ended up at La Jolla Cove. The beach is such a beautiful place to contemplate. Watching the waves became quite relaxing.
Sea World http://www.seaworld.com/ was pretty exciting. We really enjoyed the shows!
We sat in the 'Soak Zone' for the dolphine show. We got soaked!! Jackson was pretty upset the whole time. I couldn't believe it, so I took a picture!

Annie really had a great time! She seemed to be super excited about anything and everything that we saw.

At Sea World, nobody is allowed to take in food. In fact, every bag is checked before you can even enter the park. So, instead of buying over priced food for lunch, we ate sandwiches in the parking lot for the two days that we were there.

Jackson and Annalee really enjoyed the Sesame Street play area at Sea World!

The kids were able to touch sea urchins, star fish and bat rays at Sea World.

The flamingo parade was quite unexpected, but fun to watch.

Check out all the Sea Lions on the beach. There were too many to count.
On one night excursion, we searched out the San Diego Temple. It is beautiful.

You'd think that visiting 3 parks in four days and spending so much time at the beaches that we wouldn't have time for anymore fun. Somehow we were able to squeeze every last drop of time out of the week. We were exhausted to say the least! One of the more exciting stories happened when we were at the beach on Friday. Just as we were getting ready to leave, Scott was returning the body board he rented while I was on the way back from yet another bathroom break with Annalee. All of the sudden, the wake of the ocean came in at tsunami speed and washed away our towels, clothes, cooler, purse (holding the new digital camera) and everything else we had on the beach. We made quite a scene collecting our belongings. Once we were back at the hotel, Jackson insisted on unlocking the hotel door. Oops, it didn't work. Maybe the ocean water ruined it. "Scott, go to the front desk and get another key programmed." Once he came back, he told me that the hotel locked us out because we were suppose to check out that day. We had planned on being there one more night. What a fiasco. Scott was able to get the room for one more night. But, trying to sleep with lobster colored sunburned skin is impossible!! What a trip.