Izabella turns 1 year old July 15th

It's hard to believe that it has been a year already.  She is growing fast and getting prettier each day.

Last night in San Diego...

It's Saturday night and our last night in San Diego, so we decided to go out for a few drinks. It was so sad knowing that we had to go home, back to the 100+ heat in Phoenix.

Electricity producing windmills

At one point on our way to the coast, we ran into a section covered in electricity producing windmills. These were breath taking to see. There were thousands of them everywhere, on both sides of the highway. I have seen a section here in northern Arizona that had maybe 20 or so, but there must have been thousands...

San Diego and the beach

After the USS Midway tour, we went back to our hotel room and walked around the beach area just taking in the sights. The next morning we decided to move to the Best Western hotel that was across the parking lot from our hotel because it had a better view of the beach and the boardwalk. We spent the remainder of our time at this hotel, which turned out to be a wonderful room. It was so nice to be able to leave the arcadia door open so that we could hear the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, oh how I love that sound. We also rented bikes, which is not quite my idea of fun, since I am not that coordinated nor am I balanced. Nevertheless, we rode those bikes for about 4 hours; going from one end of the boardwalk to the other end, which we figured, was about 4 miles one way.

Here are some pictures of us enjoying the beach.

 

USS Midway tour

The next morning, we reluctantly left that beautiful room and headed to San Diego. Did I mention we made no reservations at any hotel? We were thinking we might stop for the night somewhere along the way, but ended up driving all the way to San Diego instead.

Once we got to San Diego, we got a room next to the beach, dropped our bags in the room, and headed to the USS Midway Museum. They have turned the actual ship into a museum with self-guided tours. The tour also included going up into the area where the captain commands the ship. There were many stairs and walking, we got a lot of exercise.

These photos are from the deck, and as well as from the parking lot looking at the ship. It was an awesome tour.

Our anniversary vacation

On Wednesday, July 4th, we took off to go to California to spend our anniversary and a mini vacation. We got on I-10 with no firm designation or hotel reservations, and headed to Santa Monica, CA, and then hoped on the PCH down to Venice Beach and Hermosa Beach area. We rented a room in Hermosa Beach (Beach House) which was much more than we had planned to spend, but since it was our anniversary, we splurged.   


These are the photos of our room. OMG! I did not want to leave that room. This room came fully furnished with plates, glasses, wine glasses, coffee machine and mugs, two-burner stove and microwave, and a refrigerator. It even had a sink and a gas fireplace, which we lit later on in the evening, because it got cold. We decided to go and get our drinks and snacks and sit on the porch that overlooked the beach and boardwalk.