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So this year the wife and I decided to go to San Diego for this year’s family “vacation”. I say “vacation” in quotes because as any parent knows, there’s not a whole lot of vacationing that goes on during family vacations. There’s running after kids, who’s got the snacks, honey where are my socks, STOP HITTING ME, turn left here… NO NOT HERE, where’s your boarding pass, I’M HUNGRY!… eh, you get the picture.

We’d originally planned to just hit Sea World and then spend a few days at Legoland when the idea of checking out the USS Midway Museum came up. Since my father-in-law was stationed on it during Vietnam it seemed like a cool idea. Then since Ryan just did a report on it, we tacked on a trip to the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala. For any readers not in the 4th grade, that would be the Mission in San Diego (and for non California readers, the Missions are a California thing… look ‘em up).

Anyway, here are some notes on each:

• The USS Midway

  The first stop upon landing was a run through the USS Midway Museum which was mildly interesting. Katie, of course couldn’t care less and Ryan didn’t really grasp what it was all about, although he found the maze-like passageways through it kinda fun (more on that theme later).

  I found it kinda “just OK” too until I wandered into the CIC. The CIC was done up just as it was during Desert Storm when the USS Midway served as the command center for the US Navy operations in that theater. When I say done up I mean right down to the actual CNN broadcasts from the night of January 17th, 1991. That was over-the-top cool.

  I was also taken by how cramped the thing was. An older gentleman who was as tall as I am casually commented, “I’m glad I was in the Army.” I couldn’t agree more.

• Sea World

  Next up was a day at Sea World. The neatest attraction there — after the dolphins and Shamu of course — was this huge, elevated play area. That kept Ryan’s focus for over an hour while he ran amok across the various bridges, nets and tubes and such (aka “maze-like passageways”).

  Then there were the various enclosures (yay sharks!) and Ryan and I “flew” to the Arctic and we had a lot of fun with that. Our course all of us also enjoyed the Pets Rule show immensely as well. Did you know they can train house cats?

• Legoland

  The main event, of course, was two days at Legoland. Ryan’s favorite “ride” was the Pharaoh’s Revenge, which was basically a two-story cage where you could shoot foam balls at each other. That and The Hideaways, where he could again run amok all over the place… yep, you guessed it, through the “maze-like passageways”.

  Katie liked the smaller rides, and getting her face painted. We stayed off the many water rides as it was too cold for getting wet. We also stayed off the roller coasters because we’re all wusses.

  Speaking of the weather, it was cool but not overly cold and we only got a little rain at the end of the day Friday. What was somewhat sad was that we reportedly got a few inches of snow at home while we were down in San Diego (we only get snow once or twice a year so it’s still fun when it happens).

  The Sea Life aquarium at Legoland was pretty good too, smaller than Sea World of course but just as good aquarium to aquarium.

• Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala

  The last stop was the San Diego Mission. It was pretty neat in it’s own way, being that it was the first church in California. By this time, however, we were all pretty tired but Ryan still found some of it interesting.

  It was neat to walk around the actual Mission that Ryan did his 4th grade report report on. I have to say, after seeing the real deal, his cardboard mockup was pretty good.

• Other stuff

  Instead of lugging my laptop and the Nikon D300 (and the suite of lenses and gunk that go with it) along like I did for Disneyland last year, this year I elected to go über light, carrying only my iPhone and my new Panasonic DMC-LX3.

  The camera performed admirably, putting up with all manner of the bad shooting conditions I shoved at it. It does shoot a little “hot” so a -2/3 EV adjustment made it all good. 400 photos made for a decent pool to pull a Flickr set from.

  However, on the phone side, the iPhone ate itself on the flight down. The music I was listening to stopped and the screen went all static-y (seriously, it was kinda neat). And then it went dead as, well, a brick. This was of moderate seriousness because we’ve found the iPhone’s GPS a real plus on far away trips and both parents having working phones is a must in large amusement parks.

  So I looked up an Apple Store in San Diego and took it in. They happily replaced the dead iPhone with a new one but then that one turned out to have a bad ringer switch — which broke off the next day — so that resulted in another stop at the Apple Store in Carlsbad for another new iPhone. Two iPhones later and I was good-to-go.

All in all, a good time.