San Diego 2.0

If the previously undeleted countdown timer on my phone is any indication, it’s been about three months since we left for San Diego. It feels like a long time ago based on the summer we’ve had (compared to 2020) – also, it feels like this was just a few weeks ago. This vacation is likely one we’ll be talking about for the rest of our lives, but isn’t one that we’ll really want to remember.

If you hadn’t heard, I had a heart attack our second night there. I wrote a lot about it over on my personal blog, so go check it out for details. The tl;dr, if you don’t want to click, is I spent two days in the hospital after getting stents for a minorly blocked artery. Vacation changes when you spend the start of it in the hospital. Suffice to say, the rest of our time in San Diego was really about processing what happened and trying to have as “normal” a vacation as possible.

We stayed in the Mission Beach area, in a house we’ve previously rented right by Mission Bay. We stayed there about two months after Dom turned one and knew it was perfect for a week of not doing a whole lot (especially with COVID precautions). We did manage to visit the zoo a few days after I got out of the hospital, but we most certainly did not walk the entire park. We also managed two boat days with our boat membership at Freedom Boat Club. The weather was a bit chilly in May, if I’m honest. Maybe it had something to do with having a heart attack and being on like five new medications.

Oh and by chance we got to meet up with Miss Sarah, who was Dom’s nanny between Miss Ginny (went with us the first time) and Miss Emilia (went with us this time). In an odd twist of summertime fate, all three nannies have been with us in some fashion at this house. It also has the distinction of being the only place we’ve ever stayed at twice, ever. In many ways, it was good to have something familiar, given what happened while we were there. So, yeah, San Diego.

P.S. – We got to see the Seattle Mariners lose in another city… and I was the second MLB game attendee in the hospital that weekend with a heart attack!

: It didn’t take long to start playing in the sand.

No day was complete without time in the sand.

: Dom’s night vs. Daddy’s night

Family trip to the San Diego Zoo

Desert Hot Springs

We just returned from our second trip to California this year, so I figured it was time to get the pictures from the first one online. We made this reservation in later December and traveled down to the Palm Springs area in later February. We were all feeling the strain of COVID lockdown and needed to get away for a little while to catch our collect breath. Anyone who knows me knows I like to plan trips like nine months in advance, so a two month lead time qualifies as spur of the moment. That’s not entirely true, but you get the point.

We ended up renting a house in Desert Hot Springs (DHS), which is a small town just north of Palm Springs. With COVID measures still in place and none of us vaccinated, we figured we’d stay somewhere off the beaten path and spend our time lounging around and going on a few outdoor excursions. DHS has no major attractions to speak of and it’s really nothing like Palm Springs, but I can’t say we’re huge fans of that scene anyway. Really we were looking for somewhere sunny, warm, and away from crowds – we found that.

We did manage two hikes where we were there – one in a little known trail that enters Joshua Tree National Park and another in Palm Canyon on the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation. We’d been to Joshua Tree a few years ago and didn’t feel the need to drive the long way ’round to possibly have to deal with a bunch of tourists. The park is definitely something to cross of your list, but we find that we’re much more into water and forests than we are the landscapes of the area. We’re probably breaking some National Park unspoken law by not being terribly interested in JTNP. Oh well. The hike in Palm Canyon ended up being about three miles and Dom did it mostly complaint free… as long as we gave him a snack every hour.

Other than that, there really isn’t much to speak of about the trip. We spent a lot of time enjoying the sun in our backyard and just plain relaxing away from our house in Seattle, which was really starting to feel like a prison with amenities. For those unware, Washington and especially Seattle has had some of the most restrictive and long-standard COVID measures over the last year+. It was really nice to experience the outside world, given travel was pretty much the only hobby our family had before the pandemic. No complaints here.

Palm Desert

Two and a half months ago, not the lifetime like it feels, we took a family vacation to Palm Desert in California. We wanted to head somewhere where it was warm, the sun would be shining, and was in the same time zone. Coachella Valley to the rescue. We rented what is basically a glorified hotel room with a small kitchen on a Marriott property and that’s about it. We went to the zoo one day and went to pool a lot of the days. There were also naps and adult beverages at the pool. Oh, and we took a day trip through Joshua Tree National Park one day. That was cool. I could see us going back as a slow paced spring break getaway. Shame flying in Palm Springs is expensive enough that you drive the hour to/from Ontario.