5 posts tagged “san diego”
After we rested and cleaned up, we met back up with Albert and drove to downtown San Diego, where we had dinner at Sushi Deli. Simone and Ranmali love this place. The sushi was good and fairly inexpensive compared to other sushi places I've been. Check it out if you're ever in San Diego.
After leaving the Salton Sea, we drove up to Joshua Tree National Park. We stopped at the vistor center to pay our fee and pick up a brochure. Flipping through the brochure, I noticed a list of park wildlife. Among those were rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and mountain lions. Uh ... I seriously felt a moment of panic, but then realized I had just made my friend and her roommate drive 2 1/2 hours so we could go hiking. There was no way I could back out now.
Thankfully, we didn't see ANY animals while we were hiking (though we saw piles of droppings all along the path). I was silently panicking for the first mile of our 7-mile hike. But then I figured screw it, I couldn't enjoy my time if I was going to be nervous, so I sucked up my fear and enjoyed the rest of the day.
Joshua Tree is SO beautiful. The pictures don't do it justice.
The sea itself is creepy. Walking up to shore, you come upon lots and lots of dead fish (our theory was they committed suicide to escape the salty water). The water along the shoreline is tinged red. There isn't even any sand; the ground is a crunchy shell mixture.
Now whenever anything weird happens, I'm going to call it a "Salton Sea" moment.
This is probably my favorite picture from the whole vacation.
According to Simone, the pier in Ocean Beach is the longest pier on the west coast.
On my first day in San Diego, Simone picked me up from the airport and then after dropping my stuff off at her place, we walked down to the beach. The weather was cooler than I expected for southern California, but I was still able to wear a t-shirt and flip flops and not be too chilly. Simone and I sat on the beach and talked for a while. When her roommate showed up, we drove to another beach to watch the surfers at sunset. Then we had dinner at a local bar where I tried fish tacos for the first time. For some reason, everyone was really tired after that so we went back to Simone's, where her roommate made chocolate chip cookies and we all dozed on the couch.