More San Diego

Day 3 1/2 (Wednesday, 6/24): After lunch, we drove north, then east up Point Loma. We passed some beautiful homes, a military checkpoint, and a national cemetary before arriving at the entrance to Cabrillo National Monument. (Cabrillo was the first European on record to see the California coast.) $5 gets you in for a week. There's a visitors' center with incredible views of both San Diego Bay and the open ocean. We also talked with a volunteer who dressed as a conquistador. He helped the kids try on chain mail and took pictures with us. Up the road just a bit is an old but gently used lighthouse. (Gently used because just a few months after it had been completed, the builders discovered they'd built it too high on the point. The fog that frequently hangs low over the harbor obscured ships' view of the lighthouse. They built another lower down the point that the Coast Guard 'operates' today.) The best part of the park were the tidepools. Though it isn't really tidepool season, the kids were still able to find sculpin, anemones, crabs, spiny lobsters (after the gulls had eaten them), and lots of hermit crabs which they had fun holding. We'd love to go in the fall when the tide gets even lower.

We grabbed dinner at a nearby Denny's then drove back up the point to a city park on Sunset Cliffs to... (wait for it) ...watch the sunset. The kids and I climbed/hiked down to a narrow strip of beach for some photos, then back up to watch the finale. Sadly, a distant and previously unseeable cloudbank prevented us from watching the sun dip into the sea. We drove along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard in the dark and coveted some amazing homes before returning to the hotel.