SoCal VaCa

Back in July we had great plans for a return vacation to Cancun with our friends Tyler and Stephanie again.  We had been given a free week at the condo we stayed at last time and our friends gave us free buddy passes so we were stoked for an awesome, FREE, beach paradise vacation.  ...But then our friend at jet blue with our buddy passes lost her job which meant we lost our plane tickets.  We all had work off so we decided to quickly throw together a trip to San Diego so we could still see a beach.  It ended up being a little chilly- in the 60's, not exactly bikini weather, but we made it work.

The first night we went down the the gaslamp district downtown and enjoyed some yummy, overpriced italian food.

Later we took a walk along the boardwalk at our hotel.  We had a great view of the harbor and downtown San Diego!!

We went to the Maritime museum.  They have several old sailing ships, steam boats and submarines you can explore.  They were really interesting.  I am super senstive to motion sickness and the swaying of the boats started making me sick so I only did a few, but the others got to see all of them.  They were so cool.

Next we went to La Jolla beach where sea lions like to hang out.  Look at the cute little white baby!  She was our favorite.  The sea lions were so funny and so interesting.  We just sat and watched them for a long, long time.

La Jolla has these cool cliffs and coves along the shore.

We went to sea world!  I was the only one who hadn't been before.  We went to every single show they have and got our fill of dip n' dots and junk food.  This was the dolphin show which was my favorite.  Way more impressive than Shamu.

After that the plan was to drive to Palm Desert, California, spend the day swimming at our hotel, and drive through Joshua Tree National Park the next morning.  As soon as we pulled into town the A/C in our car decided to go out.  And Palm Desert is HOT.  So our nice men let us girls go to the pool while they tried to fix the A/C.  No Luck.  It couldn't be fixed for 2 days so we bought spray fans from the store, filled our little cooler with ice, wore our swim suits, and pressed on:

We got to Joshua Tree the next morning and it was AWESOME.  It was really hot so we just did one short hike and enjoyed the rest from our car--not that the car was any cooler.

This is a joshua tree- a really big one.

there are lots of cool rocks to scramble and play on

We got about an hour away from Joshua Tree when the car started making a weird noise.  We happened to be by a teeny little gas station on Route 66 which was the only the civilization for a at least an hour in any direction and the car broke down.  Seriously, the "town" had a population of 5.  Five people.  We tried adding some oil and got the car kind of going again so we decided we'd better keep going while we could.  The car completely broke down about two miles down the road.  SO, we took turns hitch hiking back to the gas station and called a tow truck.  It took a couple hours for it to get to us but we were just happy to be at the gas station with air conditioning rather than on the side of the highway!

This was not a good day.  We got about a half hour down the road when the tow truck had a blow out.

So we got to wait another two hours for another tow truck to tow our broken tow truck.  This time outside.  On the side of the highway.  In the mojave desert.  In 115 degrees.  The tow truck took us to Needles California which is on the Arizona border.  We sold the Subaru for $150 to a junk yard.  We had a to take a taxi to the nearest rental car place which was almost an hour away.  We drove to St. George where Doug's family has a condo and decided to stay the night there.  We went swimming at the pool and saw 'Salt' and the day ended on a good note.  We made it home safely the next morning.  We are now the proud owners of a Subaru Forester and a second car payment.