Weekend adventure...

Chris has lived in San Diego for three years and I have lived here for almost five years.  There are so many cool things to see here and lots of places we haven't seen so Chris and I decided that we are going to get out and see our beautiful city.  One of the places I have always wanted to see is Cabrillo National Monument.  Chris has been there a couple times but he humored me last Saturday (October 16th) and we played tourist for the afternoon in our own town.  

Cabrillo is a national monument dedicated to Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, one of the early founders of the area.  It's up on a hill so you have great views of San Diego and even Mexico.  

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 I won't bore you with the history or facts of Cabrillo but if you are interested, click here. 

The day was pretty cloudy and over cast so we couldn't see Mexico like I was hoping.  But look! It's the Hotel del Coronado!

 Chris in front of the statue of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo

 We loved this little old timey boat in the San Diego Harbor. 

My favorite part of the park was this old lighthouse.  It was first lit in 1909.  So fascinating. The sad thing about this though is that the people who manned the lighthouse led very lonely lives because the lighthouse was so far away from San Diego proper and nobody came to visit them. 

 This is what the light of the lighthouse looks like.  

Rad spiral staircases

They had the actual light of the light house closed off to the public so this is as far up as we got.  So close.

 After walking around the statue and light house, we drove down to the tide pools.  The tide was pretty high so we didn't get to see too much marine life.  

The only critter we saw was this little crab hiding in the rocks.  

 The crashing waves were pretty cool though.  

Since we were so far south, we both got simultaneous texts from Verizon welcoming us to Mexico and instructing us how to make calls. 

 Both of our phones were roaming.  This normally wouldn't have been a problem but shortly after receiving these texts, we went back to our car to leave and it wouldn't start.  Our car wouldn't start and our phones thought we were in Mexico.  We stopped a nice couple who helped us try to jump the car but we had recently replaced the car battery so we knew that it was probably something else.  After the unsuccessful jump, we tried walking north back to "America" to call AAA but that was also unsuccessful due to shoddy reception and dropped calls.  We walked back to the car and, lucky for us, there happened to be a couple park rangers in the parking lot.  We asked then what we should do and they said they would give us a lift back up to the visitors center so we could call AAA.  At the visitors center, after finally ordering a tow, we sat and waited.  And we waited.  And we waited.  Long story short, to get to the park, you have to pass through a naval base station.   Our driver didn't know it was a public road and it took a couple phone calls (oh yeah, our tow truck driver was from Greece and didn't speak English very well) and convincing from one of the park rangers that he could, in fact, pass through.  

Our sick green machine.  So sad.

This is the back of the head of Ray, our tow truck driver.  He came to help us.  Before he towed our car, he tried to figure out what was wrong with it.  He jiggled the keys in the ignition.  He banged a wrench around the under side of the car.  He messed with the locks and lights.  Then, he locked our keys in the car.  Right after it happened, panic swept over me and I thought, "No, not this. Not now."  Then I realized, "hey, he's a AAA guy."  He got out his tools and had it opened within one minute.  It sure gave us a much needed laugh, though. 

Ray working his towing magic.  

The day turned out a little different than we planned but all in all, it was an exciting adventure and besides all the car stuff, a good afternoon.