CA Vacation: Days 1 and 2

We arrived in San Diego around noon and picked up our baggage and rental car fairly easily. We also decided to rent a GPS system, which probably saved our marriage. I teased Greg that he would have trouble driving in Salt Lake without a voice telling him where to turn, but he's managing very well. It was also funny since the rental car agent commented several times that we would want a nice car for our honeymoon and gave us a free upgrade when he couldn't sell us on it. We figured he couldn't imagine a 22-year-old woman having been married for 3 years, so we didn't tell him. We went straight to SeaWorld, then checked into our hotel, then to the San Diego temple, but forgot to bring our camera to both attractions. We stopped on the way home to take a picture of the San Diego temple, which is why the below picture is in the daylight.

San Diego LDS Temple

Friday, we went to the San Diego Zoo and back to SeaWorld. At the zoo, we saw elephants, tigers, lions, meerkats, pandas, hyenas, hawks, polar bears, zebras, gorillas, oranguntans, monkeys, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, bears, and tons of other animals. It is HUGE. We took the bus tour in order to save time and only walked to a few animals we wanted to see.

A polar bear playing with a ball.

Greg on top of a polar bear statue at the zoo.

An African elephant.

Two chimpanzees and a MASSIVE orangutan. The lower chimpanzee kept coming near the orangutan and acting like it was going to attack. The orangutan just moved farther and farther away for a while until it took a swipe at the chimpanzee and the chimpanzee ran off. It kept coming back, though. It reminded me of a kitten jumping on a bear until the bear takes a swipe at it. Stupid chimpanzee, if you ask me.

Me in front of the hippopotamus tank. I think they could have swallowed me whole.

I liked the zoo, but we both loved SeaWorld. We saw the Shamu show Believe twice, the dolphin show twice, and the Shamu Rocks show. Greg liked the whales, I liked the dolphins and penguins. My favorite whale was the cute baby killer whale in the Shamu Rocks show, but I didn't get a good picture of it. I took WAY too many pictures, so only my favorites are below. By the way, it took me forever to figure out how to make the pictures appear below the text. I was just about to call Erin or Cathi or Kimberly when I figured it out.

A killer whale (obviously). I think her name was Korky.

Shamu.

Shamu, again.

At the dolphin interaction pool, the dolphins swim right up to the tank walls and just stare at everyone. They sat there for 10 or 15 minutes just watching the people looking at them.

One dolphin swam right up to the rocks at the ledge and perched itself there waiting to be pet. Greg ran over and pet it while I took the picture, but it swam away before I could pet it.

The dolphin show included two pilot whales.

Emperor penguins perched themselves on top of the ice, allowing me to take this picture through the glass.

The pool these sea turtles were in was pathetically small compared to the other exhibits. Poor Dude Crush needs to get back to the ocean.