Home again…

I’d love to tell you that is nice to come home but the truth is, I much prefer not working

The only problem is…..food. Weird isn’t it? After twenty years of cooking you get to eat out for dozen days straight but you find out about half way through the trip that you miss your kitchen. You get sick of restaurants, fried food and ice-cream. You get to know the inside of your toilet much better than you ever wanted.

But other than that, road trips are a blast if you have a stamina for it. We decided to start our trip in San Diego , California. From there we did a quick pit stop in Los Angeles, then on to fabulous Las Vegas and then another long ride to Grand Canyon Village in Arizona.

For those us you who are considering any of these places I’ll offer some thoughts. I do have to forewarn you that your family habits and idea of fun might be different then mine, so keep that in mind.

Sand Diego was a cool town. Kind of place where I could see myself spending more than few days. We stayed in Marriott next to Gas Lamp Quarters. Two huge towers that Marriot built must have been designed by idiots because you had to wait ten minutes for the elevator. I mean, c’mon. You build the place for thousands of people but only give them few elevators? To boot, the pool must have been heated to 90 degrees making it very uncomfortable. But those were the only bad parts. We really did not spend much time in the hotel other then sleep anyway. I would do you a disservice if I didn’t mention that each of the hotels there charges $25 a day for self parking. Talking about feeling like you are back in NYC! And to boot, there were probably only few hundred parking spots if that many for thousand or more guests. If you happened to return to Marriot at the wrong time of the day you had no parking.

After an nice flight we arrived in San Diego to find refreshing 80 degree temperature and no humidity. We headed to Gas lamp Quarters for late lunch and then walked over to Petco Park to catch Padres game.

Gas Lamp Quaters really comes to life at night and their trolley thing is way too cool

Chuck Jones Gallery…one of my childhood heroes is a must see

 My son has expressed desire to see every major league park in the country and since Petco was less than a mile away, I said why not.

The park itself is very nice and the concession prices, same as City Field of Yankee stadium’s. $8 for “premium” water? What the hell is “premium” water. Do they strain it though the gold sieve? What a joke. It was nice to see a “wine tasting station” inside the park. Kind of cool even though I am not a wine drinker.

I particularly liked what they had in the outfield, a big grassy meadow onto which you can bring your blanket and sit on the grass and watch the game. Cost? Only $5 a ticket.

The next day we decided to visit San Diego zoo. We overdid the walking in sweltering heat .When I got up the next day I found I could not walk without my knees buckling! My calf’s were on fire and hurting like hell. It’s truly a wonderful zoo but although seeing one of the only pandas in USA was a treat the kids seemed to enjoy most watching an male elephant crap about 50 pounds of turd.

….

How did we know it was a male?

Hmmmmmmm

The marina complex in San Diego is  truly beautiful. You can walk along the water’s edge, look at boats you will never be able to afford on one side and restaurants lined up on the opposite side. Plenty of street performers along the way from mimes to clown, saxophone players and yes, even Sponge Bob waiting for your kids to take a picture with. One thing that I wish we got to see was a aircraft museum on USS Midway. It looks so impressive when you look at it from the marina. We just ran out of time.

Since we could barely walk after the zoo trip we decided to do something that didn’t require a lot of walking, sample some local party boat fishing. You have to buy California fishing license to get on the party boat in addition to fare which surprised me. We decided to do a ¾ day trip as we wanted to have some time to do other stuff.

When you rent your fishing equipment (for a fee of course) you will be given a package of teardrop sinkers and tiny hooks. Only when you get on the boat and find thousands of live anchovies swimming in the live well you realize why. You have to change your live bait every few minutes because the rockfish will generally only go after the liveliest one and if you don’t get a fish within a minute of two, you have to put anther live anchovy on the hook. To say that I spent more time baiting their hooks then fishing would be an understatement. For whatever reason, we were spanking everyone  on the boat by wide margin, even some local sharpies. The mates were visibly upset when we started to toss fish back in the water. They pleaded with us that those fish will die on the way down as their air bladder were inflated from being brought up from deep water. I just didn’t have a heart to keep a fish the size that we use for bait back home. Most of the catch consisted of small rockfish, maybe 6 to 10 inches and occasional mackerel.

Of course the wife and kids insisted in being entered into the boat pool which ended up being a good thing when my wife brought up a nice red snapper which turned up being a pool winner

Of course she was wearing her “lucky” Surfcaster’s Journal hat

We also visited the seals at Children’s Pool in La Jolla and walked along the water’s edge for few miles catching a sunset. Lots of people spread out on the grassy patches along the water on the blankets, waiting for a sunset.

The architecture reminded me very much so of Europe with clay roofs, lots of flowers everywhere and more people walking then driving.We even came up on the wedding on  beach with a member of our Armed Forces playing a second fiddle

God Bless Our Troops