San Diego, California (State #45)-Sweetwater Regional Campground

January 2-15, 2017

We spent almost two weeks in the San Diego area at Sweetwater Regional Campground. The campground was nice and VERY reasonably priced for something so close in to a major city in California. It had great playgrounds and the restroom facilities were nice. There weren't a lot of trees around the campsites but at this time of year, I will not complain about that! To our surprise, the weather was much cooler and wetter than we anticipated!

Another thing that made this campground nice was that it appears to be a pretty common campground for traveling families such as us. We were able to hang out for a week with Jordan's old friend Melia and her family. We met them in Orlando in 2015 and then again at the rally in Florida and in Pennsylvania. The girls always have so much fun together and we always enjoy getting to see people we know. But we also met three other families and made some new friends.

And now onto what we did. As I said, the weather was a bit of a challenge but we were able to take in a few of the sites and the weekend weather was pretty nice. Of course, we visited the San Diego Zoo and we all enjoyed that.

We also went on the USS Midway, which was named after the battle that took place near Midway Island after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We listened to the included audio tour, which the kids typically enjoy, and the kids completed the ranger program. The ship was HUGE and we were a little surprised when at the end we figured that we had been touring the ship for SEVEN hours (except for when we stopped to eat lunch)!  The kids did great and really only started complaining at about the last hour. But we had one more area to tour which included the dining areas, doctor, dentist, bunks and such and they enjoyed that as well.

The docents on the ship were super friendly and loved to share any information that they could. They took interest in the kids and overall made it fun and interesting. On the flight deck, two docents gave great talks about the procedures for take off and landing of aircraft. While Jordan did take a little snooze during one of them, Jacob sat and listened so well.

And the other places we visited were:

La Jolla Beach to see the seals and sea lions

(I was surprised how camouflaged they were)

Point Loma at Cabrillo National Monument to check out the tide pools.  It's great that they have docents out there during low-tide to point things out and tell you about them.  We saw our first sea hare!  It was like a huge water snail.

Coronado Beach

Flint Science Center in Balboa Park I did not take any pictures there but we also had lunch and walked around a bit of the park

the Living Coast Discovery Center

Jacob just loved this guy and said he was just so happy!

And this guy kept showing off so we just had to take his pic!

and Urban Jungle, which is an indoor playground. This was perfect for releasing some energy on a very rainy day.

Overall, we had a good time. Perhaps we will return some day but there are two things we would change: it needs to be just a bit warmer and we would try to find a place farther north than the campground we chose. While the area was not bad, it really wasn't in the beautiful areas of San Diego.  For now, we will move on to LA (and I will probably get even colder!)