That was an easy title for this post! While rainy Ohio was covered in clouds, Patrick and I got on Frontier Airline (which after all uses the slogan: "A whole different animal") Wednesday, April 29th and headed west, first stopping in Denver and then a connecting flight to San Diego where the weather was PERFECT! Our final destination? Legoland USA located in Carlsbad, California.
A short car ride north on the deadly I-5 and we reached Carlsbad around 9PM PST. It had been a long day, the normal 24 hours turning into 27 for us, but we were too excited to just crash in the hotel. We explored a bit around us, the city of Carlsbad at 9PM being more like 1AM here in Cincinnati. It was odd and I had wondered if perhaps there were a curfew that I'd missed in the tourism literature. We didn't find much that reminded us of home and it was dark, so we grabbed something to eat and headed to our room at a newer Motel 6 which was, just like the rest of Carlsbad, very nice.
Thursday morning we were up early and headed out. The time zone difference definitely an issue. It was too early to head to Legoland and during our nocturnal adventure the night before we found that we were actually fairly close to the amusement park, so we had plenty of time.Our first stopped we decided was the ocean. As we neared the public beaches we were glad we were in the car with no one else to see how goofy we were. You'd think we'd never seen water before! There in front of us was the expanse of the Pacific Ocean and we were struck by the beauty. Parking the car and despite not being prepared for a stroll on the beach we were drawn toward it.
We walked along the beach for several minutes and watched the beach wildlife: little squirrel-like creatures, joggers, walkers, surfers, and knew that we would be back once Legoland closed in the late afternoon.Legoland wasn't exactly a challenge for Patrick the Ride Warrior, but he had a great time. Adorned in his Diamondback First 10,000 Riders t-shirt from Kings Island he ended up in conversations with several people who apparently were into visiting various amusement parks too -- other honorary members of the Ride Warrior Brotherhood.
Patrick's favorite rides were the Volvo Driving School and the Robotic Arm. The driving school had cars that didn't ride on tracks like I'd driven when I was a kid at the amusement park. The kids drove around the town, supposedly obeying traffic laws. He went on this ride several times during our visit. The other ride he was thrilled to take it to the maximum intensity (a 5!) and just watching him made me want to throw up.
We made Legoland and the Sealife Aquarium a two day adventure. Patrick rode everything at least once and was able to participate in the Mindstorm activities as well as be part of a live action show, which was really pretty good.
Before leaving, we made sure we visited the California Flower Fields which were gorgeous.
Our visit was toward the end of the blooming season and it was an amazing sensory experience with the sights and and smells of beautiful flowers. One of my favorite moments during the trip happened after walking around the immense field of blooming flowers, we got to see some of the smaller "specialty" flowers including the rose garden.
Although the roses seemed to have already bloomed, the smell was still wonderful. I initially thought there was music being piped in so a person could sit on one of the benches in the flower garden, but it was actually a live performance of the music of Khausak. He had various traditional flutes hanging from the microphone and performed music from his CDs which he was selling. My souvenir along with a stone rounded by the tide, was his CD "The Life of the Wind" which he recommended as relaxation music.Patrick had done a little mining for unattended toddlers too.
Legoland was nice, but for me, the best part of the trip was sitting on the beach and just watching the waves...
We had to head back to San Diego and eventually Cincinnati on Saturday, so avoiding I-5 we took the much more scenic Route 101 driving by Torrey Pines Golf Course (which was yet
another nerdy thrill for someone from Ohio who has watched too much television). It was with a lot of sadness (and some sunburned skin) that we left the beaches of California and the Pacific Ocean and headed home.Many more pictures of our latest adventure can be found on Picasa as a slideshow.
