You know how, most of the time, when you stop to look at birds they scatter or fly away? Well… sometimes they make a beeline right for you.

I actually had to back away from this character because my camera wouldn’t focus that close!

These American Coots were all over the Bahia property and me taking photos of them did nothing to curb their appetite for the clover flowers.

I’m in San Diego for the Plant and Animal Genome conference, and since Alamo is running a great $10 a day weekend deal, I have a car till Monday for $36 total. Nice.

After checking in to the hotel, I drove down to South Mission Beach and walked along the ocean front walkway. After a day in airline seats it was a perfect antidote! I stopped in to Cane’s to watch the sunset -  a bit touristy, but the view is unbeatable, and my southwest spring rolls were good.

This morning I went to the Hash House a Go Go for breakfast and had the turkey and bacon hash. It was enormous, easily enough for two people, and about $12. More importantly, it was a good mix of flavors and quite tasty.  I’m pretty sure that I won’t be eating again until dinner time.

Our last post about San Diego (until we go back that is). :)

JRDN—Eric ate here last June, so we made a point to have dinner here on this trip. The food was very tasty, but I think our waitress was having an off night. One of my sides was wrong (quickly fixed) and Eric’s flat iron steak took forever to come out. Thankfully, the steak was still delicious. Our waitress wound up giving us an extra bottle of wine because of the mistakes, so we came out happy, albeit slightly sauced. The atmosphere of this place is very chic and modern. A wave design constantly changes color on the main dining room wall; this is one of those places where it is impossible to be overdressed on a Friday night.

The Eggery—As this place was located a block from our hotel, we ate here twice for breakfast. I had the best eggs benedict ever here on our second visit. Even though the place was completely packed, somehow my poached eggs came out perfectly cooked. Plus, they were sitting on toasted english muffins, a generous portion of avocado, dolloped with hollandaise sauce and sprinkled with crispy bacon. Yum. I didn’t hear Eric complain about his croissant breakfast sandwich, so it must have been good as well. :)

World Famous—This busy place right on the beach was actually attached to our hotel and although it took forever to get a table (we were watching this sunset unfold while we waited, so it could have been worse), the service was friendly and the food was good. I had a very surreal experience when our waitress introduced herself as “Leandra.” I suppose the novelty of meeting someone who shares your name wears off quickly for people with common names (Eric is very used to this), but I rarely meet other women with my name, so that was a nice surprise. My bacon-wrapped scallops and lobster bisque were both very tasty. Eric’s chicken ceasar salad was equally tasty.

Coronado Brewing Company—After our stint in Balboa Park we headed over to a brewery in Coronado. One of the nicest things about San Diego is that everything is close, so it only took us ten minutes to get from Balboa park to the brewery. Obviously the thing we were looking forward to most was the beer and I was disappointed when I discovered that they were all out of their dark beers. In winter! Grrr! Thankfully, the Mermaid’s Red Ale hit the spot and Eric really enjoyed the Islandweizen. We split an order of Spicy Potato Flautas and a Hawaiian calzone, both tasty. We left completely full and with a new pint glass for our collection.

Mission Cafe—This place is known for it’s comfy atmosphere and hearty breakfasts and our meal did not disappoint. Eric managed to almost finish his Mission French Toast even while nibbling the rosemary potatoes off my plate. I enjoyed the chicken apple sausage and fresh rosemary bread and a never ending mug of very strong coffee. All the breakfast places along the beach are busy, so you definitely need to get here early unless you want to wait for a while, even during the week!

As you may have noticed, we wrote about breakfast and dinner above, but not lunch. With a big breakfast we often aren’t hungry until dinner, and since breakfasts are typically cheaper then lunch, we’ll often eat two meals with a small afternoon snack when traveling.

Our options were limited on Sunday due to the rainy weather, so we had a leisurely breakfast and used our 24 hours of internet-time to research some indoor options.

Eric suggested we look into Balboa Park which is a huge park of museums near downtown. After looking around at admission pricing and offerings, we decided on the Museum of Photographic Arts.

But first we took a damp stroll around the first (large) lathe building built in the US that houses several orchids, bromeliads, and other flowering plants. The grounds of Balboa Park are sprinkled with sculpture and fountains, including a huge ampitheatre for the weekly organ concert each Sunday.

Once the rain cleared up we walked over to the Spanish Village arts center to check out some local artists.

This is more or less what every building looked like, absolutely stunning detailed architecture…

It’s easy to see why locals and tourists alike flock to this place!

Due to some confusion about when exactly the tide went out, we were unable to take full advantage of the famous tide pools near the Cabrillo National Monument. As it turned out, both low tides were just before the park opened and just before the park closed for the day. Bad luck.

The coast was beautiful, however, and thanks to the clear weather, we could easily see to Mexico.

(click on the photo for the larger version via Flickr)

Unfortunately, the place was absolutely crawling with people so without the tide pools to occupy us, we bade the park a fond farewell.

Personally? I thought this place was a ripoff. It’s not that they weren’t lovely views of the Pacific, but an $8 day use fee for a few short hiking trails? We were wondering why so many people were walking up the steep road to the trails until we spotted the small parking area just outside the entrance gate. So, apparently only the tourists pay. Lovely.

The Guy Fleming trail was a short 2/3 mile loop with Pacific Ocean overlooks and ridiculous amounts of signage telling us to keep out/off things. I don’t know what it is about Californians and their signs, but they were everywhere. A lot of good it seems to do when we could clearly see footprints where folks had jumped over the chains in places to hike near the cliffs when they were asked multiple times not to. Plus, the actual Torrey pines weren’t altogether special or unique and the literature we were handed didn’t offer much insight either.

Perhaps the loveliest scene here is the sandstone cliffs rising up from the beach. We visited about 2 hours before sunset, so the rock was lit up nicely. A little disappointed as we were looking forward to something a little more profound.

Both Eric and I had mixed feeling about taking a whale watching cruise, but the time was right for the northern migration of the California gray whales back up to the Bering Sea along the coast of California, so we gave it a go.

I bought some dramamine from the onboard shop just before we sailed off and I am very happy I did. My eyes were pleasantly focused on the horizon while others around me were feeling pretty awful due to the Pacific Ocean waves.

You can’t see it from our photos but there were about 7 or 8 boats crowding around these two whales. Law states that you cannot approach within 100 yards of a whale, but folks in motorized rafts were whizzing by and it wasn’t just the whales that were getting agitated.

Of course seeing the whales in the wild was exciting, but overall the experience left me cold. It certainly didn’t seem worth the harassment of the whales for a few fluke photos.

Another highlight of the trip was the lovely views of the city and harbor when we came back into port.

Even the seals were showing off.

The “No Trespassing” sign is a nice touch but I don’t think it’s working.

On another note, our Garmin helped us immensely throughout this trip. It even showed us how to get back to shore. :)

(That big chunk of land at the top where all the roads stop is Mexico.)

Our ridiculously cheap rental car took us out to the desert for the first night of our San Diego trip. ($48 including taxes for five days, the guy even commented that this was why his salary is what it is! Whoops.)

There are shorter ways to get to Julian, CA (our room reservation for the night) but we decided to drive out on I-8 and head north through Cucamaya Rancho State Park. It took about 45 minutes to get out there and the bustle of the city was replaced by desert and mountain views.

Throughout the drive we saw evidence of the California wildfire damage of last year—entire hillsides covered in scorched trees.

My brother, Ryan, drove down from LA for a day of hiking with us. He must have left well before dawn because I got a phone call at 8am that he was sitting in the parking lot! :)

As Eric mentioned, Friday started out unremarkable, but after a filling breakfast at Margarita’s in Julian, we were hoping for the best… there’s only so much hiking one can tolerate in bad weather.

The chilly rain gave way to breaking clouds and finally some warm sun by early afternoon. I swear we went through three seasons on the Palm Canyon trail hike, from downpour to hot sun, but the views were completely worth it.

All this hiking through the mountains and all of a sudden, a palm oasis!

Surprisingly (considering it’s the desert) there was a rushing creek with several waterfalls throughout the hike. So I guess all the rain did have some benefit!

The Anza-Borrego visitor’s center was very helpful in terms of information on hiking trails. We didn’t buy a detailed map ($1) on this visit because we only did the Palm Canyon hike. If the weather had been more predictable we probably would have tried to do more, but as it was, we saw quite a bit on this five mile roundtrip hike.

While waiting for a table to open up at World Famous last night, we experienced the most incredible sunset. It started out ordinary and transformed into something amazing.