So, we loaded everyone up in the car and said, hey, are you ready for the zoo? (yaaaaaes.) Hey! Are you ready to take a surprise vacation for three days and go see the GREATEST ZOO IN THE WORLD?! Uh, okay? Didja bring my DS?
Beachy views on the way to San Diego.
The drive was about three hours. There was an accident that slowed things down a bit, but it was by the beach, and we did a quick stop-in-the-middle-of-traffic-and-grab-snacks-from-the-back-back but it all turned out fine.
We checked into our totally cheap but perfectly adequate hotel, unpacked, and ate our first picnic lunch. We didn't have any money for a vacation, and we are trying really hard to not spend any money. So I packed three lunches on our cooler (pulled from our fridge, I didn't even need to buy anything!)and planned on breakfast at the hotel.
We drove the 8 minutes to the zoo. We turned in our free tickets from Evan's job and used them to upgrade to a family membership for $40. The tax-deduction makes it a negative cost for us, and we know that we will be back to take advantage of it when my dad visits and when we accompany Evan to Comicon.
First of all, the Zoo is on Balboa Park. I have been going to San Diego for YEARS and I never even knew it existed. It's a gorgeous, green, huge park that contains the Zoo, an array of museums from the tiny to the gigantic and world-class, and is the largest botanical garden in the country,
We entered the zoo, and after a bit of walkabout, we availed ourselves of the free bus tour that came with our membership to get a good idea of the landscape.
While we waited for the bus, we passed the lineup of strollers (we are about 6 months out from strollers) and saw the cutest pudgiest squirrel taking advantage of all the snacks that strollers usually have stashed in them. He was super tame, much redder than his east coast brothers, and had awesome little tufts of fur on his ears. Oscar and I fell in love with him.
We tore ourselves away from the cutest widdle squirrel in the world and got on the bus tour. We puttered around the park (in retrospect, the bus tour wasn't the best way to figure out the zoo, since it went on lots of roads that you couldn't go reach on foot). We heard a great, odd gutteral sound...it was the lion roaring.
We drove by the giraffes. They were awe-inspiring to everyone except my kids, who grew up doing the stroll in the Bronx Zoo where you leave the Gorilla area and crest the hill to find the awe-inspiring giraffe families. Oh well, I always like seeing giraffes.
Rhinos!
We got off the bus tour and enter a Japanese Tea Garden. The structure inside the garden was where the high-up zoo muckidy-mucks met. My crazed, flailing-armed kids love Japanese tea gardens. Some of you might remember that we had Oscar's naming party in one. There's just something about the solitude, the limited space, the green, the water. Something about the water (my kids and I, we are water folk) inhabited by koi, catfish, turtles, ducks, and bizarre dragonflies. It's just magical, and I think that it we ever get them to a traditional Japanese tea ceremony at at tea garden, they might actually sit still for the first time in their brief lives.
please excuse this slight respite. it was veteran's day and I was missing my dad.
This weekend was a special "Bird of Prey" weekend. There were bird callers, craft tables, and a surprising amount of presence by the Navy. When I thought about it, it totally made sense -- San Diego is a Navy town. Even my brother was stationed there during his stint in the reserves.
Although I am a humanist and pacifist, I am incredibly proud that I come from a Navy family. My dad and my brother both served, and they are both great men, in no small part because of their stints serving our country. Do I want my kids to serve? Well, if they can get out of it what my dad and brother did, hell yeah. There is a pride and history that only those who have served in the military know, and I am grateful to my dad and brother for making me aware of it just a bit.
When I worked at DC, I art-directed a comic in multiple languages that warned kids about mines and mine safety. We worked with Green Berets to develop the comic and they distributed it in Afghanistan and many other places that had leftover mines. The Special Forces presented us DC folk with a coin that we were supposed to carry around with us. At a military bar, you can slam down that coin and strong-arm people into buying drinks for you. The whole project was one of the best things I was involved with at DC, and although I've never served my country in the traditional way, I am so grateful that I was able to serve my country in this one tiny way.
ANYHOO, there was a tent and exhibit at the zoo for the U.S.S Midway, an aircraft carrier that has been docked in San Diego and turned into a military museum. My kids LOVED talking to the guys who looked just like Sampi (my dad) and why not? My dad served on the U.S.S. Saratoga, which I think was a bit smaller than the Intrepid, and about the same size as the Midway. These guys were totally thrilled to talk to my kids about the ship and even more so when they said (with coaching!) "My grandpa was a brown shirt on the Saratoga!"
Here's my kiddos in the jets that took off from the midway. We literally had to pry every single one of them out of the cockpit, kicking and screaming. The gents there were patiently pointing out every button, every lever. The kids were in heaven. We will definitely visit the Midway on our next trip to San Diego, hopefully with my dad.
Our grand plan for the day was the bus tour and the children's zoo (like most children's zoos, it was close to the entrance.)
The petting zoo was right there. It never fails to tickle me how much my kids like to pat goats.
On the way out, we saw the meerkats cuddling to go to sleep (it was almost 5pm). We never saw meerkats at the Bronx Zoo, and the Turtleback didn't have any. On our first day at the LA Zoo, the kids and I spent about an hour in front of the meerkat exhibit talking for them: "Hey, you got some cookies? Are those cookies for me? Hey, you? Do YOU have cookies for me?" Trust me when I say that vocalizing imagined internal dialogues of meerkats equals great family fun. We do it in the car all the time.
One of the gawky teenaged docents told us that a group of meerkats is called a mob, since they always have a lookout (there's always one meerkat perched on a rock as lookout) and they will often shun a member of their mob for some slight. All the meerkats in the San Diego Zoo are named for Italian mob gangsters, and there are three separate meerkat exhibits at the zoo to enable all of the outcasts.
THIS. This kind of stuff is why the Brockway/Metcalfs always go to the zoo.
We took off and mellowed out at the hotel for a bit. We made our way to Phil's BBQ, the best-reviewed place in San Diego to eat on Trip Advisor, and kept driving when we saw a 100+ person line on Friday at 5:25 pm. We checked our Yelp on the phones and found a nearby Wahoo's Fish Taco, a local chain we haven't tried but one that advertises in the LA Times, so we had a $10 off $30 coupon. (I did a lot of research on local food joints and searched out coupons for as many as I could.) Evan and I had a couple of perfectly passable fish tacos, the kids shared some rice and beans, and we all indulged in some awesome onion rings. We emerged full and happy and frugal.
We went to bed early -- all of us. I finished up the new Stephen King (IMHO in the top three of his best) and later that weekend, Chasing Aphrodite, a great bit of non-fiction about the Getty, a LA museum I look forward to going to someday. Evan watched a movie on his iPhone, we passed out, eventually (inevitably?) made room for the snuggle puppy Arlo in our bed, and rested up for the next day.
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