Now that we have officially wasted 2 day of our vacation at airport of your pick, it was now time to do something to move past the horrible start. I woke up at 8:00am which was quite awesome. For months, I have had issues making it to the alarm, waking up before it goes off. Now keep it in mind, I woke up at 8:00am PST, which is 11:00am EST. Considering how I would always wake up prior to 6:00am, every single day, I was excited to have slept in so late. Original plans were to wake up early do to the time change screwing up my body, taking the children out to the desert, and leaving them there! No, I am kidding! We were gonna head out to the desert before it got to hot to check out the desert life. I had done this last year and I thought the children would love to see the native environment. We didn't end up doing this though because of the set back we suffered over the last few days, so instead, we were off to Sea World in San Diego.
The trip to San Diego started around 10:00am. Sarah and I had been to San Diego last year for the San Diego Zoo and a Padres game, so getting there wasn't hard. We had to take Route 74 through the mountains, which is an amazing road. it twists and turns through the mountains at speeds of 55mph. Seems a bit to fast but not for me! I love the speed around the corners. I would love those corners a bit more if we were driving my WRX instead of the Prius, but nonetheless, I enjoyed it either way. Can't say the same for Sarah. She used a few choice words as we cruised around some of those corners.
The trip to San Diego took about 2 hours. The parking lot was packed and the walk to the gate was long. Once we made it through the gate, we planned our route. The Shamu show had started already so we decided to come back to it a bit later. We saw plenty of fish, seals, whales, and sharks, on our way around the park. One place we stumbled on as we started around the park was an arena which hosted Cirque De La Mer. I had never seen one of these shows and it was gonna start in about 30 minutes so why not grab a seat before they all disappear.
We sat in the front row of this show and while we waited, two Cirque characters started a pre-show show. There was a platform out in the middle of the water where many more performers would do their thing in a little bit, but back to those two Cirque Characters. They would do a bit of a comedy act for the crowd and eventually make it to a platform which was right in front of everyone. This is where things got interesting. They started trying to impress each other by getting their respective half of the arena to cheer louder. What first started out as a hand raise quickly turned into arm flexing. What first started out as an act on this platform quickly turned into and act that went around the arena. The character on our side of the arena would stop at each row and do a bit of flexing and growling to get the crowd louder than his counter part. Row by row he would do this until he reached the last row. He would return back where he came repeating himself over and over again until....... he stopped in front of me. He flexed and gave a growl directed at me. I growled back and took a picture. It was at this point I knew I was in trouble. He pointed at me and called me "Paparazzi!" He grabbed my hand and brought me up to the platform in where we met his counterpart, whom had found someone himself. This was gonna get good!
We'll call my guy "Green," as he wore a green vest, and the other guy a "Blue," for the same reason. So Green indicated he wanted me to do what he does, so he flexed one arm, flexed the other, and did a jig. I can't say it did it exactly as he did, but I'd say it was rather close. I had almost fell over in laughter amaze by what I got myself into. Blue had done a few things and the person he found repeated. This would go back in forth for about 5 minutes, showing off my skills to the crowd, receiving applause for everything I did. Finally, they switched off, Blue indicating that I was not as good as I seemed. Blue had done a few karate chops which I did followed by the water sprinkler. I was having fun. Now Green showed the other guy a few things consisting of an arm flex, another arm flex, hand clap push ups, and a hand stand. Blue was flipping out as he felt his guy couldn't do it, but wouldn't you know, he attempted it anyway. I gave that guy such props for doing it all. in the end, Blue and his guy won the competition and I headed off to my seat. The guy that won had actually continued to be a part of the show. He ended up being bullied by Green and Blue during the whole show, getting stuck in a huge ball which floated in the water, hit from time to time by a jet ski during he show once it started. Even though it would have been awesome to be that guy, I had already done more than I thought I would have done all vacation. This totally made up for the beginning of my vacation.
Once the show ended, we continued around the park to a Sesame Street 4D show. It was cute and actually scary from time to time. Water would be shot at you from the back of the seat in front of you. Air would be shot from the same place as well as from under your seat. And once in a while, your seat would shake violently! Think about how crappy your cell phone vibrates and multiply that by a million! It was enough to scare anyone!
From there we ventured off to the seal lion show called "Sea Lion Live." It was kinda a knock off of Saturday Night Live, where they would do skits of different things. They did Sea Lion Idol, and Sea Lion S.I.. They had a seal dress up like Superman and an otter would show up from time to time and be a part of the act as well. A very cute way to do a show. A break from the norm.
Afterwards we headed off to the turtle reef. I guess this is a new exhibit in the park and the turtles they had came from all over the world. As we walked around this part of the park, we stumbled across a statue of a turtle on a fake sandy beach. I wanted to get picture of the children with the turtle but as we walked up to this statue, a small boy ran over to it and hope on. I have no idea what this kid was doing. It looked like he was trying to mate with it. Sarah and I watched, making comments about what the kid was doing. Eventually we started to grow frustrated with this child hoping he would stop humping it so we can get some pictures. I don't think he spoke any english as Sarah and I made comment indicating we want to get pictures when your done frisking it. A guy, whom I would assume was his father, finally came to get him, and we finally got to take pictures before someone else came by to hump the turtle.
After the turtle, went to get lunch. Food was outrageously expensive there but it wasn't half bad. It was a lot of food. So Sarah had 1 tray of food and I had another, hers seemed a bit heavier than mine. I placed my tray on the table we were to sit at outside, where all the tables were, and went back to help Sarah since she was lagging behind. As I started back to help her, a huge seagull which was walking in front of her, started to fly up and attack her, or at least that's what it looked like it was doing. I quickly grabbed the tray as Sarah started flipping out and brought it to the table. The bird flew away and Sarah calmed down and headed to our table. We discussed what had just happened and I noticed that some seagulls were hanging out around the tables looking for food. I put down a few fries and then started feeding them by hand. It was at that point when I started feeding them by hand that I had realized I was probably rewarding the bird that attacked Sarah, with fries. Oh well.
After we got done eating, we watch the most amazing animals on the planet. We saw the Blue Horizon show which took the grace and elegance of a dozen dolphins and some beautiful birds from all over the world and watched as they combined them both in a show. Dolphins jumped about 14 feet into the air, splashed some people, and danced atop the water with ease. I truly love dolphins as I think they are the smartest water animals. We had sat further back since Sarah didn't want to get wet, but even though we sat out of water range, I still enjoyed the show as the children did.
As the day turned to night, it was now time to head back. It was a long drive and I didn't want to be driving all night, and Sarah didn't either. So we left for Pines to Palms Highway. Now if you remember how I had mentioned Sarah's dislike of our drive earlier in the day, you can only imagine her dislike of the ride at night. Now last year when I took this route for the first time at night, I drove it rather slow. This time around, I was not taking any prisoners. I drove that road as if I owned it. Sarah had spit out more choice words this time around and it even got to a point where it seemed as though she started to cry. It was at this moment that I decided to slow down. Of course, it was at this point the highway was not so twisty and turny. Either way, she was not a happy camper and she was upset with me for the rest of the evening. Hey! We got back in record time, and I wanted to go to bed!
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