San Diego Zoo

Aside from the beaches, we were the most excited about visiting the San Diego Zoo during our time in San Diego. I'd been to the zoo in the past with my parents and little sister, but Sky had never been and we were looking forward to spending a day there together. We bought our tickets online with a $4 discount and got to skip standing in line at the ticket office. We arrived just after lunch and had five hours left until the zoo closed, so we got a map from the front and planned out our route around the park. Our ticket came with a free guided bus tour of the zoo, so we went on that first to get acquainted with the park layout and learn a little about the animals. Then we spent the remaining hours running around the zoo like madmen, making sure to visit all of our favorite animals (the park is HUGE and has Lots and Lots of hills...if you visit, plan to walk a lot and wear comfortable shoes!). In the last thirty minutes before closing we caught a ride on the aerial tram that flies over the zoo from one end to the other, a nice feature that was also included with our admission tickets. I believe this day is best captured in pictures, so here goes:

Our Little, Big News!

Just when we thought we had our plans all figured out (at least until after Russia), we got one more life curve-ball thrown at us, and once again our plans have morphed into something completely new. So, without further ado, here is the big announcement…

On The Way To California!

After spending five days in Phoenix we packed up and headed west to the land of sunshine and sea, California! I-8 took us right through the Sonoran Desert National Monument, by large fields of solar panels and again right by the Mexican border.  Since the drive from Phoenix to San Diego was too far for us in one day (pulling a trailer we have to go slower on the highway and Sky is the solo driver), we were just hoping to find a boondocking spot along the way.

Desert Heaven in Phoenix, AZ

The drive from Tucson to Phoenix was a piece of cake and took us just over two hours. The desert landscape was similar to what we’d seen coming into Tucson, with saguaro cacti scattered amidst dry sand. What was interesting though was how many tumbleweeds we saw that day. It was a particularly windy day (we seem to pick all the windy days to do our driving…it makes it more exciting that way) and because we were driving through dry, flat land, tumbleweeds had nothing to stop them from swirling around the highway. I’d seen tumbleweeds crossing roads before, in cartoons and silly movies, and kind of always thought that the size of these things was exaggerated for comedic effect. BUT NO. These massive tumbleweeds, the size of wine barrels, would fly right across traffic, with no obvious trajectory pattern aside from the direction of the wind gust.

Tucson and the Saguaro National Park

Wednesday morning we woke up at the gas station on the side of Interstate 10. It was a bright and sunny morning in the New Mexican desert and we had plans to drive west into Arizona to our next destination, Tucson. The weather forecast for southern Arizona called for snow later in the day, and I had trouble believing it. Snow…in the desert…on such a nice sunny day? We’d run into similar craziness last time we’d come through Flagstaff, AZ when we experienced a gorgeous sunny day followed by a morning snow blizzard, only to end in another sunny and warm afternoon. Well, we set out on the road hoping to be parked at our campground, snug and safe, by the time this “snow” rolled in.