San Diego Trip - Part 2

Elias in the freshwater aquarium sporting a cool sun hat.

Day 2 of our San Diego trip was spent at Sea World. We thought about trying to hit the zoo and the wild animal park as well, but we decided on a simpler trip and just concentrated on Sea World. We scheduled two days to see everything at a reasonable pace, and it's a good thing we did.

Elias had a terrible night unfortunately. He played so hard the day before that he woke up many times in the night complaining that his legs hurt. I don't think Kristin slept much, and Elias woke up grumpy. We soldiered on though and arrived at Sea World right as it opened.

We immediately went to the first event of the day, dolphin feeding! Elias was actually willing to feed the dolphins! He's usually too shy to grab a slimy fish and plop it in the open mouths of any sea creatures, but not today. He's growing up. :)

After the dolphins we walked all around the park going to shows and seeing the animals. When you come to a big amusement park like Sea World with kids you make a choice, stroller or no stroller. I tend to like physical punishment and my wife is a luddite so we chose no stroller. It has the advantage of not having to manuever a clunky wheeled monster through throngs of people, but you end up feeling like a pack mule when you cart in everything in backpacks. Sam, Elias and I all carried camelbacks full of water, snacks, diapers, etc. Kristin carried Eva in the Bjorn with the sling over her body to protect her from the sun.

By the end of the day my shoulders were aching and I realized I had committed camelback sin. The beauty of a camelback is that you carry 3 liters of water around with you and can drink all day. As you drink your load becomes lighter and it balances with your physical exhaustion. It's a wonderful system. I made the mistake of conserving my camelback water. I don't know why I did considering we were surrounded by Sea World employees hawking water, I guess it was just habit. Needless to say, my camelback was still over half full when we left the park, and my body paid the price.

Elias and I wore our dorky sun hats to the park. Kris and Elias got me a sun hat for Father's day (Elias already had one) and I love it. I hate putting sunscreen on my face because it always bleeds into my eyes and makes me break out, but no need with the sun hat. It also keeps you cool. It's great! We were all feeling fairly well sun protected. All except Sam. She thinks our big hats are dorky (she won't say so, but we know :)). She managed to lather up enough sunscreen to avoid any serious burns though.

Sam holding a well wrapped Eva.

The day at Sea World was fun, but tiring. We left a little too late in the day (5 pm) and Elias crashed in the car. We were afraid he would sleep until 8 pm and then be up until midnight so we woke him up when we arrived at the hotel. After 2 hard days and only a 10 minute nap our poor son was a grouch! We should never have woken him up. Looking back now it would have been much better to have a happy boy until midnight rather than a grouch until 9. Ahh well, live and learn.

We got back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the evening finally winding down by actually watching television! We don't have one of these at home so we made it a vacation treat for Elias to watch TV before bed. The only thing good we found on TV was Survivor Man. It's a show about a guy who takes a bag full of camera equipment out into the boondocks and tries to survive with very little gear for 7 days. The guy is really funny and down to earth. We all liked him.

Tomorrow we hit the beach!