San Diego Trip Part 2 (A Change of Plans)

Wednesday morning dawned and we awoke early, however the day was dreary and dark. The meteorologists predicted rain all day, with little break and almost no chance to see the sun. We decided to put Sea World on hold until Thursday and hope that the weather would cooperate.

You could hardly see anything.

Instead of our original plan, we headed down the coast towards Point Loma. My mom had some caches to find and as well as a few points of interest she had researched. Point Loma is a peninsula that is covered in the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetary. On the tip of the peninsula the Old Point Loma Lighthouse is located. We arrived there before it was open, not realizing that it was only 8:30 and most monuments like that do not open until at least 9. (Come on, we were still on Arizona time. This messed us up a few times over the trip.)

Standing in front of the old lighthouse light.

When we were able to go out to the lighthouse, the pouring rain encouraged the person in the gift shop to give us a handicapped pass to drive up to the lighthouse. (Usually you have to walk, but we were already soaked and the rain was still coming down pretty steadily.) At the lighthouse we saw the most beautiful work of art; well really it was just the Fresnel lens, a huge piece of glass that refracts the light in a special and more effective way.

Beautiful old Fresnel Lens.

After the Lighthouse we stopped by the cemetery on our way of off the peninsula. I wish it had not been raining so hard, the cemetery was beautiful and I would have liked to walk around under the huge trees and see the USS Bennington Monument.

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

My mom was feeling brave and chose to drive over to Coronado via the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge. (If you don’t know my mom, you really don’t know what a feat this was.) Really we couldn’t see much, what with the cloud cover and cold wetness. We didn’t drive back over the bridge instead taking the long way back to the mainland.

Grandpa and Gwennie standing on the beach.

Then we found our way to a beach to search for shells. It was chilly and we couldn’t go far since the beach was bordered on the south by a Naval Base (as most things in the San Diego area are!) There was even a guard watching us walk around from his vantage point a little higher on the beach. Rhayn found many shells, although my mom found the best treasure, an intact sand dollar

Cold and wet on the pier. Close-up of the cold wet girl.

We ended up in Imperial Beach at the pier. It was cold and wet, but we wanted to walk out on the pier. The pigeons were puffed up and cold looking but I think we were all puffed up and cold feeling. My dad took Rhayn down to the beach below the pier to look for more shells while my mom and I took our icicle Gwennie back to the truck.

Rhayn's giant flower.

Our next stop was Old Town San Diego. We were hungry as it was lunch time. We noticed that on Wednesday most things were closed in Old Town (Like the Whaley House- the most haunted house in America. Both my mom and I were sad to not go in there.) We had Mexican food, which was really the only option in Old Town. Gwennie was in the sling, fast asleep through all of lunch and while we walked around (geocaching of course.) The sun came out a little, and warmed us, but we were still cold. In Old Town we found a candy shop and I bought about a pound of Salt Water taffy and some other weird old time candies.

Gwennie in the rebozo, under my jacket (not wearing shoes.) This is how I ate lunch.

It was still early afternoon, so we tried for a little more geocaching, but the cloud cover made the GPS not work very well. We decided to go back to the hotel and dry off. Poor Gwennie was frozen through.

For dinner we ate at Ricky’s because we had driven by the sign touting “World Famous Apple Pancakes.” The service was awful, Gwennie was a brat, but the apple pancake? Oh man was it good. It was a soufflé with apple on top (or on the bottom while cooking.) Also, they had really good hash browns, fresh and just nice.