Sunday, August 2, 2009

California bloggin'

Greetings from beautiful Coronado, California! We are having such a blast here on our vacation. The weather has been great--foggy and cool until about 10 a.m. and then beautiful, warm and sunny. We have done loads of stuff so far--beginning with a thorough investigation of hotel furniture:


On Friday, we visited the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park, about an hour east of Coronado. 1800 acres of amazing enclosures for animals to roam freely. Here we are in front of part of the African enclosure. Any and all animals you might spot will be far off in the distance.

We got to see lots of animals, but rather than post endless pics of animals in the distance, I'll show you one of the highlights (because there are more shots from Saturday coming...): behind the scenes at the elephant enclosure. We were in the back with the keepers, who were working with these two beauties, a mother and son. The cutest! They were having a blast taking big gulps of water and then spraying all over themselves (and the keepers, as you can sort of see here)--really funny creatures!

Great pic of David and Reese on the merry-go-round.

Yesterday, we went on another behind the scenes tour, this time at San Diego Zoo (similar to the tour we went on about a year ago). Once again, we fed the Okapi (check out the tongue on this gal)...

They are such cool animals.

We saw this panda baby--she turns two this week! She was enjoying a long lunch of bamboo and was really fun to watch.

Toward the end, we fed the giraffes. Here we are, with Silver, the 16-foot, 2500 pound male. He was a GIANT!


Sweet Abby is a 25-year-old giraffe (quite elderly in giraffe years) who has to be sequestered because the arthritis in her hips is so bad. Poor baby. We went around the side and got to feed her.

Abby's really tame and let us pet her, so not only did Reese get to feed a giraffe, she got to pet one as well. I didn't get any pictures because I wasn't about to pass up that opportunity!

David has been very excited about coming to Cali and doing his SUP (stand up paddleboarding). He sought out a specialty shop yesterday, got a new paddle, and rented a board. This morning, he hit the surf!



He caught some waves--apparently, it's quite different to SUP in the ocean surf versus the TX lakes....


And, we spent some QT at the beach by our hotel today. Reese is like a crazed animal when we get down to the beach. Despite her normal uber-cleanly ways, she immediately drops down into the sand and rolls when we get out there. She is literally coated in sand particles from her hair and face down to between her toes after we've been on the beach. Crazy girl!


And, she always wants to bury her daddy....and he obliges....

Our friends happen to be visiting the area at the same time, so we're getting together with the M fam on Tuesday. Reese is super psyched to play with Caitlin and Cassidy! I'll update either later from CA or when we get up to Seattle....

2 comments:

Kelly Sweazea said...

Seattle? You are going to be so close to me! It's HOT here, and people don't know what air conditioning means AT ALL!! :) How long are you going to be in Seattle? If you need advice let me know!! :)

M. Mehta said...

What fun! Glad you are enjoying yourselves. Coronado is amazing. :)