San Diego Sunshine

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Lighthouse on Point Lomas

San Diego is touted as having the best weather in America, so I looked forward to going there. It didn’t disappoint, the days were warm and sunny. I found a lovely county park in Bonita, near Chula Vista just south of San Diego which I booked thinking that it would be busy. It wasn’t, in fact there were many places vacant.

Our first trip out was to Point Loma. Cabrillo National Monument is there as some explorer arrived back in the 1700’s, a lighthouse, in fact two because the first one was in the wrong spot, and a military base as this land was very vulnerable during WWII and was a way of protecting San Diego bay. I had wondered why some of the most sought after land was a park and not residential, now I know. There are some rock pools there also which you can access at low tide but of course we weren’t there at the correct time. What you do get though, is a fantastic view of San Diego from the water.
Looking over San Diego Bay

A number of people had told us that we must go to San Diego Zoo. I wasn’t convinced seeing as we see many animals in their natural habitat but Lindsay still wanted to go, so go we went. We concentrated on photographing animals that we don’t normally see in the wild. The Toucan, some South American birds, and the Giant Panda. With our ticket, we also got admission to the Safari Park which is about an hour north of the city. We had heard that they have a cheetah run which excited Lindsay enough to carry his tripod around all day in the heat. The animals that interested us here were the tigers and the gorillas. The gorillas in the zoo were behind perspex and sat with their backs to us, so it was nice to see them out in the open.

Toucan
Siberian Tiger
Giant Panda

USS Midway museum is an aircraft carrier built in 1945, which you can now go aboard and see how it operated. You could spend all day there going around to all the different areas with the self-guided audio tour. We just visited the bridge and the planes.

USS Midway





The ship needs to be going 30 miles an hour for the planes to land and take off safely. They take off in quite a short distance at the front so that they use the speed of the carrier to help them get up in the air. Coming back, the speed of the carrier going in the opposite direction to the planes helps them stop.





It took $90m and 18 months to build in 1945, and it had a $260m overhaul in 1966.

It had a crew of 4,500, and unlike today, they were all men.
Hotel de Coronado

Hotel del Coronado is a historic beachfront hotel just across the San Diego Bay from San Diego.
When it opened in 1888, it was the largest resort hotel in the world

Beachfront at Coronado


Location: San Diego, CA, USA

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