Coronado | Temporary Sanity ...

Another beautiful day in Southern California. The high temperature was 97 degrees but there was a nice breeze off the water making it pretty nice to sit and watch the activities around us. We did take one trip into Coronado to replace the steak that turned rancid for some reason. I mean, we planned to eat it a week or so ago but one thing and another delayed it to the point where it was 3 weeks old by the time we decided cook it. It was pretty gnarly. I personally didn’t see a problem, but Diane did. Left alone, I would have cooked it and probably got sick so that’s one more reason I plan to keep her around. I actually don’t need any more reasons for that, I’ve got plenty of them.

The trip to downtown Coronado was very pleasant. Very reminiscent of driving around in Palm Springs. Lots of tourists. What makes it really interesting to us is that it’s surrounded by Naval bases. They have NAS Coronado on the north end, COMPHIBPAC to the south, 32nd Street Naval Base on the east across the bay, and wide-open ocean all the way to China on the west. What makes that OK is that Navy Seals train on Coronado Beach on the section that is wide open to China. We’re all safe.

We had a real meal, our first one on this trip, on that steak and the asparagus and corn on the cob Diane bought many days ago to go with the steak that went bad on us. Thankfully, the veggies were just fine. Diane doesn’t eat corn on the cob, so I got to eat all three of them and it was wonderful. Between the corn and the asparagus, we used almost an entire stick of butter. Oh, and we shared a very large baked potato, too. That used part of the butter.

After the meal we sat outside in the nice breeze, enjoying the view

… birds diving in the water for stuff … no photos for that …

… and things, or people, that float past us on the water …

This lady is in the first space in the park with whom she shares a gentleman who has one entire half of his face tattooed with so much ink that half his face is blue. I’m pretty sure it’s OK that I took the photo since she was, like, right there on the water, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell him you saw this photo. He might take it the wrong way.

Later, when the sun was almost gone, Max took a notion to object something out back on the water. He was barking at it which is totally unlike him. He generally only barks at dogs that bark at him first. So, we had to look.

Turns out, it was just a magnificent sunset that he wanted us to see.

What a good puppy, right?

Good night.

Today we all took a 2 hour cruise around San Diego Harbor. Our buses were 30 minutes early for a 1300 pickup which was perfect. Knowing how these guys get around, slowly, we told them the bus was leaving at 1300, a mythical time I never thought we’d meet. So, last night we spread the word for everyone to meet out front at 1230 so they would be ready to board when the buses arrived at 1300. Getting there 30 minutes early was a real plus. We love Jose and Arturo.

Diane took me down to the waterfront earlier this morning so I could pick up the 116 tickets we had purchased. I met Amanda at the ticket kiosk near the Star of India sailing ship which is parked on the quay near Broadway.

Diane let me out about 1/2 a mile from the kiosk so I had to limp my way there to get the tickets. “Why did you limp?” you may ask. “Because I’ve developed a terminal case of gout,” I’d reply. “My left big toe is about twice as big as the right one and I’ve had to walk flat footed on my left foot all day long. On a moving vessel.” But, it’s all good. I survived the day, and it was a good one.

Once the buses arrived at the pier everyone debarked and headed for the vessel boarding location for Hornblower Cruises. The Adventure hadn’t yet arrived so we all had to wait about 15 minutes for it to get there and unload their morning passengers.

While that was going on Ken and I handed out the tickets, one at a time. As I neared the end of the line I started to panic a bit because it didn’t appear I had enough tickets. There were a large bunch of people gathering behind our group who were also going on the cruise so they added to my confusion so one of the Georges gathered up a couple of strays stranded within the crowd of strangers and herded to them to me and I gave him the last ticket. I was absolutely perfect and kind of set the tone for the rest of the afternoon.

The Adventure backed out of it’s slip, turned around, and headed across the bay toward NAS North Island where two aircraft carriers are currently “parked”. One of them was the USS Nimitz, the other the USS Ronald Reagan.

The captain of our vessel kept up a running narrative of everything we were looking at, and directed our attention to specific areas of interest, giving us a lot of great detail about what we saw. Of primary interest was the trip past the piers of the 32nd Street Naval Station where many warships are currently parked. He named them all as we headed south into the bay.

This picture is of the Coronado Bay Bridge which links Coronado Island, on the left, to San Diego …

After touring the south portion of the bay we turned north and turned the corner to view the submarine base at Point Loma. The view was totally awesome because once we turned the sun was behind us, shining on everything we looked at. Perfect for photos.

Nice. You can see the USS Midway to the right of the photo. The Adventure’s dock is on the left side of the Midway’s pier and that’s where we’re headed.

In case I didn’t mention it previously, the USS Midway is permanently docked in downtown San Diego. When the ship was active, we on the USS Dennis J. Buckley served time as their plane guard. That’s always a small, maneuverable ship that follows the carrier to pick up any of the pilots who failed to land their planes safely on the flight deck. Not all of them made it. Enough said.

Thought it was only a two hour cruise, it seemed much longer, and everyone was enthralled with the trip and what they saw. It was just great. Diane and I were very happy because it was such a success. The major success was in getting everyone to the buses and back to the lodge without losing one person.

After returning, Diane took a list to the package store to get the requested beer. Seems they were running low in the hospitality rooms.