Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Here's the thing about San Diego. There's too many things to do. And if you're one person deciding what to do in San Diego, that's one thing - but when you start adding multiple people to the mix, you're looking at a sightseeing dilemma. Fortunately, we are more about hanging out together and if someone shows a sign of making a decision, we can all pretty much go with it.Today - we had planned to set off to Balboa Park - a San Diego gem, full of museums, beautiful architecture, tactile treasures and botanical bonanza's. We wanted to see the Natural history museum, the train museum and the Ruben H. Fleet Space museum (and perhaps take in an IMAX film there at the Fleet). Well laid plans, yes...but....Uncle Steve showed up to the hotel with his iMac book apple pro thingie or whatever it's called (yeah, I'm a pc person - the only apples I touch are red and edible). One thing about my brother - and yeah, I'm biased, but I'm telling the truth - he's REALLY, really talented with the whole music thing. He uses his computer like a recording studio (I guess that's how you would explain it?). He mixes tracks, records things, plugs a keyboard into it and makes sheet music - all kind of cool musical mysteries that I'm clueless about. So he brought over the computer to show us what all he's up to these days. What ended up happening is he put together a song featuring silly sayings straight from the mouth of the Little Moon herself. If you want to see more about that, click here and you can see the post over on the Little Moon blog (see the picture, hear the song!). Don't forget to come back and read the rest of this post though! Well - we had so much fun all "collaborating" on the song (well - Steve really did it all, but we just voiced our approval of all his tweaks and ideas) that we lost serious track of time.
Eventually, we did leave the hotel room and trotted off down the 8 West to picturesque 163 South and headed for Balboa Park. The weather was....well, the same as it is every day. 70 degrees and sunny (ok, well it's not like that ALL the time - there was one time where it got down to 69). We started off at the Natural History Museum. It's probably been 20 years since I've been there - and it was alot cooler to see now than it was back when I
was....uh.....yeah - back 20 years ago. I did not appreciate museums too much back then. Abby of course was very into it - she loved looking at the dino skeletons and tactile exhibits. Dad & Grandaddy had the patience and were kind enough to explain and show things to Abby, which is so nice because if there's more than 5 words to read, I'll just touch the thing and move on. I have no patience for reading up on how things work.....give me a lever or a button to push and I'm good to go. So, the museum was great - lots of things there and a really, REALLY cool photo exhibit called "photography at the poles"....the most AMAZING pictures of polar bears, penguins, walrus and the like. And for $1500 you could even take one home! Abby and I shared alot of favorites and we both seemed to favor photos by a guy named Ralph Lee Hopkins - click here to see some of the photos that we saw today by him.
Some other cool sites that we saw at the park today were the old fig tree that we used to climb and play on as kids....it's unfortunate to see, but now they have it fenced off. But the size of it is quite a sight to behold...the roots look big enough to be tree trunks themselves.
After seeing the tree, we walked around the park a bit - took in the architecture and various fountains. Abby especially enjoyed the main fountain (see picture up at the top) - I didn't bother to mention how I have associated, in the past of course, with known BP fountain saboteurs. I pled innocent! How was I supposed to know that adding a jug of Tide to the fountain was going to cause so much trouble....geesh.
After the fountain, we all agreed that skipping lunch made us all the more hungry for dinner...we also talked about all the things we missed seeing. So....looks like we'll be taking another trip to BP tomorrow to take in a few more things. My favorite - the Ruben H. Fleet space museum...and we'll probably see the model train museum as well.
Another fun item of note - Mike took off with Steve tonight to Pacific Beach to take part in a Samba Troupe. Mike actually participated by playing a Chocalho, Steve played a Tamborim (we think). He had alot of fun doing it and got to hang out with some cool dudes.
A long day full of fun and sun still can't completely distract us from those twinges of sadness we feel as we think of friends and family we've said goodbye to. We are thinking of you often and looking forward to seeing you again.
love and miss.
k
Eventually, we did leave the hotel room and trotted off down the 8 West to picturesque 163 South and headed for Balboa Park. The weather was....well, the same as it is every day. 70 degrees and sunny (ok, well it's not like that ALL the time - there was one time where it got down to 69). We started off at the Natural History Museum. It's probably been 20 years since I've been there - and it was alot cooler to see now than it was back when I
was....uh.....yeah - back 20 years ago. I did not appreciate museums too much back then. Abby of course was very into it - she loved looking at the dino skeletons and tactile exhibits. Dad & Grandaddy had the patience and were kind enough to explain and show things to Abby, which is so nice because if there's more than 5 words to read, I'll just touch the thing and move on. I have no patience for reading up on how things work.....give me a lever or a button to push and I'm good to go. So, the museum was great - lots of things there and a really, REALLY cool photo exhibit called "photography at the poles"....the most AMAZING pictures of polar bears, penguins, walrus and the like. And for $1500 you could even take one home! Abby and I shared alot of favorites and we both seemed to favor photos by a guy named Ralph Lee Hopkins - click here to see some of the photos that we saw today by him.
Some other cool sites that we saw at the park today were the old fig tree that we used to climb and play on as kids....it's unfortunate to see, but now they have it fenced off. But the size of it is quite a sight to behold...the roots look big enough to be tree trunks themselves.
After seeing the tree, we walked around the park a bit - took in the architecture and various fountains. Abby especially enjoyed the main fountain (see picture up at the top) - I didn't bother to mention how I have associated, in the past of course, with known BP fountain saboteurs. I pled innocent! How was I supposed to know that adding a jug of Tide to the fountain was going to cause so much trouble....geesh.
After the fountain, we all agreed that skipping lunch made us all the more hungry for dinner...we also talked about all the things we missed seeing. So....looks like we'll be taking another trip to BP tomorrow to take in a few more things. My favorite - the Ruben H. Fleet space museum...and we'll probably see the model train museum as well.
Another fun item of note - Mike took off with Steve tonight to Pacific Beach to take part in a Samba Troupe. Mike actually participated by playing a Chocalho, Steve played a Tamborim (we think). He had alot of fun doing it and got to hang out with some cool dudes.
A long day full of fun and sun still can't completely distract us from those twinges of sadness we feel as we think of friends and family we've said goodbye to. We are thinking of you often and looking forward to seeing you again.
love and miss.
k
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