Vacation - San Diego

Was on vacation all last week with my family (wife and kid) and the in-laws (from Mississippi). Had a grea week in San Diego, CA. I have not been there since my Navy Days, would have been my 4th or 5th time there.

I was born in LA in 1971. Lived there until the mid 70s. Some of my very first memories in life were from when I went to San Diego with my Mom and Dad in 1975 or so. A few weeks ago my Dad came over for dinner and brought an old photo album that had pictures from that San Diego trip in it - mostly of Sea World.

In 1989 I joined the Navy and was shipped off from Portland to NTC/RTC San Diego for boot-camp. I left a week before Thanksgiving and graduated February of 1990. That was the year I missed the Holidays. I did not go back to San Diego after graduating boot and apprenticeship training until I was on the USS Shasta in 1993 while heading out on WESTPAC.

Until this last week I had not been back since 1993.

San Diego is beautiful, built for tourism in it's touristy spots. Mass transit is better than the once legendary Trimet here in Portland. Locals were nice to us. everything is well placed so we could have a vacation and stay out of the hair of the locals.

We ate at one restaurant that is Brazilian BBQ. You pay one price and you get an incredible salad bar (including salmon, mussels, fried bananas, and all kinds of leafy greens) plus the meat service where a "gaucho" comes to your table with skewers of rib-eye, sirloin, brisket, and flank all grilled over wood fire.

We went to The San Diego Zoo and had a ton of fun. We spent 7 hours there (or more) and only saw about half the zoo.

We went to the USS Midway Museum, the last time I was on the Midway was when I was a young 19 year old sailor on the USS St. Louis and the Midway had caught on fire after an accident and we had to provide a Rescue and Assistance team to her in 1990 in Yokosuka Japan. I was on that team. I didn't do much but it was pretty exciting none-the-less. We toured the ship and my wife and kid got a good taste of life on board a US Navy ship - very close quarters and not very comfortable. A lot of stairs (ladders as we call them) and hand rails and bulkheads and pipes all around you. We did a few parts and my wife and mother in law took a break while father in law and kid went with me and we did a thing for my kid where she'd go around and find answers to questions in a booklet and she could turn it in and earn her "wings". It was fun but everyone was getting tired.

 My kid being sworn into the USS Midway's Junior Wings.

The next day we went to Sea World. That was fun too, and the first time I'd been there since 1975. We saw the killer whales thing and walked around a lot and looked at all the sites. We ended our Sea World trip with "dinner with the whales" where you go have a nice meal and the trainers come out and have a Q&A and some of the whales are there. Gretchen (my wife) got some great pictures and we had a nice family memory.

The day after that I got my first Navy tattoo at Nittis Tattoo in Mission Valley. My artist was an apprentice and he did a great job.

Traditional American, back of calf. My first "Navy" tattoo 21 years after I got out.

Our last day there was spent on Coronado having lunch at the big hotel there and touring the city.