Lions, and tigers and bears, oh my!

Here we are in San Diego.  It is a very pretty city with a low crime rate and an ocean beach and lots of car accidents!  Mike has noticed that California drivers follow very closely and change lanes seemingly at will and with very little room to maneuver and this seems to foster a lot of accidents one of which took place right outside our hotel window!  So far we have managed to avoid them.

We went to the zoo today.  This was something I was really looking forward to and it didn't disappoint.  We saw all our favourite animals (Mike - rhinoceros, William - reptiles of all sorts, Anthony - kangaroos and pronghorns, and me -- the great apes and elephants).  The zoo is very large, but even so some of the enclosures (for the cats in particular) seem too small.  When you think of the expanses that these animals use in the wilderness an acre doesn't really cut it.  We tried to think what it would be like for an animal in the zoo -- there are pros and cons, the boys decided.  You'd get all your meals and healthcare and a safe place to live -- all very important, but then it would be horribly boring, just to live in your house and your yard and never get to go anywhere.  They have programs for enrichment for lots of the animals, but it's still not like being free. 

The zoo is very forested with great swathes of bamboo everywhere and running water in almost every animal's enclosure.  You can always hear the birds singing and it feels very natural and lush.  The zoo keepers are knowledgeable and there is lots of room and you don't feel rushed even though there are hoards of people everywhere.  It was very hot and many of the animals were asleep, but the tiger was pretty lively and the gorillas, bonobos and orangutans looked into our eyes and did some ape-y things that made us wonder about how different we are from them.  We saw a couple of tortoises mating (very passionate in a stony, slow sort of way) and lots of animals we didn't know existed.  It is wonderful to see the diversity of life on the planet -- and the zoo is very active in conservation and habitat preservation and animal research of all sorts so you feel good about spending money there.

We will see what the safari park is like tomorrow -- it's supposed to be a place where the animals are free and the people are enclosed, so I hope that's true.

After the zoo, we had planned to have a picnic in Balboa Park and we found a nice spot near all the museums and the Theatre (which is a gorgeous Spanish looking building) and started to set up the barbecue, when we realized that I had forgotten the propane back in the hotel.  Plan B!  Hodad's Restaurant in the Ocean Park area (like an edgy Kitsilano)

was featured on "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" -- one of the boys' favourite Food channel shows -- so we headed out there.  There was some sort of street festival going on with music and crowds of cool looking people.  The restaurant was very hipsterish -- license plates covering the walls and an actual car parked inside with a table fitted inside.  There was a line up out the door and down the block so we took take-out and trundled off to the beach with our bag of burgers, milkshakes and "frings" (onion rings and french fries).  The beach was spectacular -- soft golden sand and great crashing waves and people trying to surf and swim and pelicans diving into the water head first to catch fish.  The milkshakes were delicious but the burgers not anything to write home about.

It was a full day and now we're back in the hotel -- all tuckered out.  We'll have an early night and start up again bright and early tomorrow.

I'm still behind with the pictures -- this is us in front of the "House of Mystery - the Oregon Vortex" which I mentioned on July 16.