Spring Break: Monday

Monday was a rainy, gross weather day! And of course, this was the day we planned to go to the famous San Diego Zoo. We looked at the forecast and it said the rain would stop at 9:00AM, which was perfect because the Zoo opened at 9:00AM. Spoiler... it rained the WHOLE time we were at the zoo!

We started the day off with the trolley tour around the zoo. We thought it would stop raining by the time we finished the tour, but no such luck. It was nice to get a view of everything at the zoo without all the walking in the rain.

We saw elephants

The koalas were adorable

Camels

We finally broke down and bought the ponchos after we realized the rain was actually getting worse.

Avery's favorite animal... the red panda!

We got to see one of the pandas

On the bridge overlooking the Skyfari

They opened up the Skyfari, so we rode it... in the rain!

We had reservations to eat at the restaurant, Albert's, which turned out to be a great way to get out of the rain. We were soaked and cold!

After lunch, we decided to see a few more things on our walk back to the car. I really wish the weather would have been better!

Family selfie on the way out

We got back to the hotel in time for a little rest and back out to the pool by 4:00 for cookie time! Then, the girls chillaxed in the hot tub.

Morgan will swim any day of the year - she's a fish!

Such a nasty day... the view from our balcony was not very pretty today!

It did clear up a little bit by dinner time.

We grabbed dinner at the PB Ale House near our hotel. Turns out, it's an Iowa bar! :)

Spring Break: Sunday

On Sunday, we were up early! We were not yet used to the 2 hour time difference. We grabbed some breakfast at the hotel and got ready for our day.

I had big plans of doing some tide pooling, but I had read the tide times wrong and we were going in at high tide instead of low tide. Oops! So, no luck with the tide pooling! We were out pretty early, so we got a great parking spot near La Jolla Children's Pool. This is where the seals hang out! There is a big seawall that you are sometimes able to walk out on. When we were there, the waves were too high and the seawall was closed.

We sat and watched them for a while. A lot just slept on the beach, but some would go in and out of the water and swim around in the cove.

Here's a picture as we were walking up the coast.

Our next stop was La Jolla Point, where the sea lions hang out! There were so many of them lounging on the rocks! And they were barking and loud and smelly! Their little faces were so cute, just like a puppy!

We walked a little further to La Jolla Cove, which is a small beach popular for scuba and swimming. When we were there, the water had high levels of bacteria and a conservationist at the beach said we should not go in the water. Of course, Morgan still put her feet in!

We kept walking along the coast and saw this cliff with tons of birds! When I looked closer, they were all sitting on nests filled with eggs!

We ended our walk at the Cave Store, which has a stairway down into a cave that is a big tourist attraction. Luckily, when we were there, the line was short and we didn't have to wait at all.

It was a little low clearance and the steps were kind of mossy, but we made it down to the cave.

Our pictures didn't really turn out, but here you go! There's a deck over the water in the cave. The water would come rushing into the cave and sometimes up onto the deck.

Going back up was a little harder than coming down - ha!

We tried out our new selfie stick!

On our walk back, we saw that some people were walking on Shell Beach (it was under water when we first went by). It was still almost underwater, but Morgan wanted to go down... so we took more stairs and checked it out!

We got back to the hotel and Morgan wanted to swim in the ocean. The water was so cold! We got boogie boards and chairs from the hotel and headed down to the beach. She couldn't spend too long at a time in the water, so they put on tumbling show for us!

And then this happened... and Avery was done! She thought it would be cool to do a handstand with a wave coming in, but it was a little bigger than she expected and totally soaked her head. :)

So, we went back to the nice heated pool!

We were getting hungry for lunch, so we went to the Bare Back Grill. Good food and drinks!

We took a small rest and then it was back to the pool! Every day at 4:00 PM the hotel gave out fresh baked cookies, so we made a point of being downstairs for that as much as we could! We also learned that although the cookies in the lobby ran out fast, there was another stash in the cafe by the pool!

It got pretty chilly at night. The hotel had some tables with firepits and heat lamps to sit by.

We were all tired and decided to grab a quick bite at a diner near our hotel called Biggie's. Milkshakes, hot dogs and burgers!