Good news: My website is functioning again after a few days’ hiatus. Thank you Dan!
Bad news: I’m not on a beach anymore!
Back to good news: Coming home means being in Colorado. No real complaint here.

All told, we spent about 2.5 days in San Diego. We got the lay of the land the afternoon when we arrived, then we spent an entire day at the beach. Honestly, an entire day. We even had lunch sent to our cabana. This do-nothing beach day was 75% of why we flew to California, and we made it count.

That left one more day to run around San Diego. We broke up our day into three wonderful adventures:

1: Brunch with Sam.

This is a wild story, bear with me: in my freshman year of college (2001 or 2002), I took a road trip to Cleveland with friends from my dorm. We met my dorm-friend’s family and some of his friends from high school, including Sam. Sam and I hit it off right away, and — pre-Facebook, mind you — kept in touch. Shortly after my Cleveland trip, Sam moved to Orange County, California, and has been there ever since.

When Sam heard I was coming to San Diego, she offered to drive out to meet Dan and me for brunch… only the second time we had ever met in 17 years. We had an absolutely delightful conversation and Dan later told me he completely understood why Sam and I would have connected. I’ll be the first to admit we live in a strange world.

2: Balboa Park.

It would take a dedicated week to really see Balboa Park, a sprawling campus of museums and parks and architecture. The area had been recommended to me by friends who know my style, so we spent the afternoon taking in what we could and wandering through a street festival (which may, from what I could tell, be raging at all times).

The next time we’re in San Diego I’d like to spend more time here to visit, for instance, the Museum of Man and the San Diego Zoo.

3: USS Midway.

Dan’s father served on an aircraft carrier, the USS Intrepid. When Dan and I decided to visit San Diego, Dan was particularly interested to visit the USS Midway, as he had never had a chance to visit an aircraft carrier and make sense of some of his dad’s stories.

The museum is fantastic. I doubt we even saw half of it, it was so enormous. And I was thrilled to find that an aircraft carrier is less claustrophobic than a submarine!

And just like that, our day was over! Dan had the brilliant idea to take a ferry back to Coronado, where we watched the hotel set up bonfires on the beach as the sun set on our final night in California.

P.S. If Dan had his way, photographs of his face would probably not be festooned all over this site. I tell him it’s because his mom reads my blog (she does; hi Jan!) and would probably like to see pictures of her son, but really it’s because I love his wonderful, handsome face.