2014 San Diego Vacation 5: Whale Watching, The USS Midway, And Coronado

For our trip, we bought something called the San Diego Go Pass. They gave us admission to Legoland, the zoo, and Sea World, as well as several other things around the San Diego area. Our passes were good for four days, so today was our last day to use them. The last thing we had planned to do with our passes was to take a whale watching cruise.

I was pretty excited about this. I thought it would be pretty neat to see some whales, but I didn't even care if we did. Just the chance to head out on the water would be enough for me. I wanted the kids to be able to say that they did that.

Out in the bay, we got a pretty nice view of San Diego. I couldn't help but take some pictures.

The further we got, however, the rougher the sea got. Without the harbor to break the waves a little, the rocking on the boat got fiercer. We all headed back over to sit down, and did our best to keep our breakfast down. My wife was getting hit the hardest. Her stomach was doing flip-flops. They had complimentary barf bags available, and she sent me to fetch one for her.

On the boat, there were people from the local aquarium who went around teaching people about the Gray whales that we were expecting to find out on the ocean. One of them came by our family to teach us a few things about whales, how they ate, their migratory patterns, and how they got named Gray. When she discovered that my wife was feeling ill, she offered her a ginger candy. She said that she used it herself to keep from getting ill on the cruises.

She was happy to accept. The woman got one out and handed it to her, then headed off to educate some others. My wife had tried her best, but just before she got that ginger chew, she leaned forward and deposited some of her breakfast into that complimentary barf bag I'd brought her.

It was kind of too late now, but she popped the ginger candy into her mouth anyway. It helped a little, and kept her from making any more deposits to her barf bag bank, but the horse was already out of the barn as they say.

We stopped a couple of times, and floated for a while, watching the waves in search of a whale spout, but never saw any. It was starting to seem like we wouldn't find any, despite it being the best time of year to catch the whales in their migrations. Funny thing was, I wasn't sad about it at all. It had been a really neat experience one way or another, and I wouldn't have felt cheated at all if we just had to head back to shore without ever seeing a whale. The cruise could only last for so long, and then they had to head back in, and our time was running out.

We moved along again, and stopped in a new area. And suddenly, kapow! Whale spout!

 It was pretty neat to see. We watched the whales surface and spout off, then go back under again several times. Then at last we saw the spout that was followed by the whale's fluke appearing out of the water. That means the whale is diving deeper. Whales, of course, are mammals, so they have to come back to the surface to breathe, but they can hold their breath for a very long time. This whale was not going to be back up for at least five or six minutes.

It really was very neat. I could have floated around out there forever watching that. But our time eventually ran out, and we had to head back.

There was one more surprise in store for us, however. My wife, who was still pretty green around the gills despite the ginger candy, made me take Little down to the bathroom. On our way down, we heard one of the crew get on the PA and announce that their were dolphins around the boat.

"Wow, Little," I said. "Come here, quick."

We ran over to the windows that surrounded the lower level of the boat, and looked out. We could see two dolphins leaping out of the water after each other. No, wait, that wasn't right. I looked closer and realized that it was actually a dolphin and a sea lion leaping in and out of the water with each other. That was pretty neat. In the end, our whale watching cruise delivered on everything it offered, and whatever we might have imagined as well.

When we got back to the pier, we decided that we had to go visit the USS Midway. After all, it was only a one minute walk from where we were, and we got free entry with our San Diego Go cards. In fact, we got this amazing view of it as we came in from the cruise.

The USS Midway is not really a ship anymore. It's just a museum these days. You could go through the whole ship from top to bottom, and see the bunks, the laundry, the mess, and all the areas the sailors lived, as well as the upper half where the sailors fought. It was very neat to look at the jets and helicopters up close, and even better, there were many you could go inside of.

This quickly became Little's favorite thing to do. He was pretty grumpy, but as long as he could get inside of stuff, he smiled.

We were only able to see a pretty small portion of the ship before we had to go, however. My wife was just feeling too yucky. Her lunch hadn't been enough to settle her stomach. She wanted to sit down for a little while out of the sun, and rest. So, we said goodbye to the Midway, and went back to the car.

From there, we drove to Coronado Island and stayed until the sunset.

Coronado was a new beach for us. We'd spent all our time on the beach down the street from our house so far, and this one was new scenery for us. Like most beaches, it was gorgeous. It was wonderful to spend time there and soak up the sun in mid-December.

Like most days on this vacation, we were there on the beach when the sun went down. So, of course, I pulled out my camera and took pictures.

These were my favorite from this day.

Now that the sun was going down, it was time to get home and make ourselves some dinner. We kissed the beach goodbye, got in the car, and drove across the bridge toward Pacific Beach and our home away from home.