California Roadtrip - Day 7

July 27, 2012

ZOO DAY!!  I have been waiting for this day for such a long time!  I have been so excited to go to the San Diego Zoo, I could hardly hold it in any longer.  I felt like a little kid when I woke up this morning so excited to go to the zoo.  And it met my expectations!  We got there around 11:00 am. (I wanted to get there at 9 when it opened, but someone wanted to sleep in…which is fine since we are on vacation.)  We bought our tickets online a week ago, so we didn’t have to stand in the LONG lines forever!  If you ever go to the San Diego Zoo, I suggest getting the tickets online.  Totally worth it.  The tickets that we bought were good to ride a Skyfari (a tram that takes you from one end of the zoo to the other), the Zoofari (a tour bus that goes around 70% of the zoo) and the Express Bus (this bus has stops that take you around the zoo so you don’t have to walk everywhere).  

As soon as we walked into the zoo, someone from the zoo was showing a toucan.  It was the only toucan in the zoo, so we were really lucky to see it.  I had no idea that it only weighs 1 lb.  It looks like it should weigh so much more, but it doesn’t!  Really cool.  

After stopping for a few minutes to see that, we headed to the Skyfari.  It was really neat to be up so high and see all of the different trees and habitats that they have put in that zoo.  Being up high was also a good chance for us to see just how gigantic the zoo is.  Seriously, it was HUGE!  After the Skyfari ride, we decided that we wanted to go on the tour bus so we could see most of the animals that way.  It was the longest line ever, but we got to see a ton of the animals and we didn’t have to walk to do it all.  It was totally worth it to stand in that long line.  It was a 35 minute tour, and it showed most of the animals, so we were happy.  We didn’t have much else planned for the day, so we decided it didn’t matter how long we were there.  

After the Zoofari tour, they were having a special Chinese acrobatic performance at 2:00, so we decided to go see that.  It was really neat and they were really good!  It was mostly little kids, but they were amazing!  The different things they do portray different animals, which I thought was pretty cool. 

That was about a 30 minute show, then we went to see some of the other animals on our own, and closer than when we were on the tour bus.  We mostly wanted to see the animals that aren’t at ALL of the zoos.  First we went to see the Panda Bear.  There are only 4 zoos in the US that have a Panda Bear, and San Diego is one of them.  I really wanted to see his face, but he looked so comfy lying down on the tree taking a nap.  Even though I didn’t get to see his face, we got to see a Panda, and I am happy about that.  I love Panda bears.  

The animal I like even more than Pandas…Koala Bears!!!  San Diego has the largest exhibit of Koala Bears…but they haven’t finished building their new exhibit yet.  They have around 43 Koala bears and they are SO cute!  We only got to see 2 of them because they didn’t have a place to put all of them right now, but if you go to the Zoo in 2013, make sure you go see the Koala exhibit.  I want to go back just to see that!  The Koalas were also asleep when we saw them (this is why I wanted to get there early) but they were still so cute.  

Last but not least, we went to see the Polar Bears!  There were 2 of them, and they are HUGE!  They were far away from where we were, but thanks to my amazing camera I got some okay pictures of them and got to see them a little bit better.  

After we were done looking at the Polar bears for a while, we headed on the Skyfari to go back to the bottom of the zoo and eat some food, we were starving at this time, around 3:00.  We had been there for about hours, and were STARVING!  The food at the zoo was expensive, so we didn’t want to get our food there…but I kind of wish we had because we were so grumpy toward the end.  Oh well.  Mark said his favorite animal at the zoo was the Lion or the Rhino.  When we got to the Rhino on the tour bus, they were very active and playing around with each other, and we got really close to them so it was really neat!  

We also got to see the zoo keepers clean an elephants foot, and that foot was HUGE.  It is crazy how big these animals are.  I think my favorite animals were the Koala bears and the Panda, of course!  I’ve never seen either of those and they were so cute and cuddly.  When we finally left, we went straight for some food.  I’ve been craving Chipotle (I crave it a lot) so we went there and it was even more amazing than usual because we were so hungry.  I love that place.  

It was around 3:45 at this time so we headed to Coronado.  I was a little nervous to go over the bridge after yesterday’s incident, but it was just fine.  We went straight to the beach to enjoy the rest of the warm sun.  We put our feet in the water, dug holes, and laid in the sun.  It was perfect weather and I loved it!  We even walked around Coronado a bit, and now I know where I want to live when we retire.  I loved everything about Coronado!  EVERYTHING!  It is such a nice place with really nice people. 

We went to the Hotel Del Coronado just to see what it was all about, and they had some of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen.

I loved the flowers, the people, the big roads, the houses, the beach, the sand…everything.  Mark promised me that he would take my back there again and we can stay at that hotel when we have money, if we have money, so I am looking forward to that day.  We left while it was still sunny, around 6:30, so we could go to our campsite and put up our tent in the light.  Yes, we camped again.  This place was AMAZING.  We camped at Lake Jennings, which is a beautiful reservoir about 30 minutes east of San Diego.  On our way there, we got some camping things that we thought we might need, mostly for smores.  MMmm.  We got there, set up the tent, and started a fire.  It is warm there, which is much different than the other place we camped at.  My one complaint – beetles!  GROSS!  They were everywhere!  We must have killed 30 before we got back in the tent tonight.  And we made sure to zip up the tent tight…they were disgusting.  When we remembered how close to Mexico we are, it made sense why there were so many bugs.  But that’s part of the whole camping experience, right?!  Mark had fun burning them and watching them squirm.  I know…we are cruel.  Oh well.  It was pretty funny to watch too.  When he would put the fire by the beetles they would just turn over on their back and move their legs, it was pretty funny.  Hopefully they won’t be crawling all over me tonight!