Saturday

We didn’t have any specific plans for the day, but we had a list of possibilities. The only constraint was that our activities should have minimal walking, as my mom’s mobility is somewhat restricted.

We stopped by their motel a bit after nine and after discussing the possibilities decided to do a two-hour harbor tour in the morning and visit the Cabrillo National Monument in the afternoon.

Littoral Combat Ship

The weather was on the cool side and overcast. The first part of the tour is a loop of the northern half of the harbor. We passed the boats of the San Diego Maritime Museum (the Star of India, the HMS Surprise, a Soviet submarine), the live bait barges and their attendant sea lions sunning themselves, and the submarine pens below Point Loma. A small flotilla of pleasure craft raced ahead of us, exiting the harbor. We turned around and concentrated on Naval Air Station North Island.

The USS Ronald Reagan, CVN-76, is berthed there undergoing repairs and refitting. It was in the same place last time we visited the area, ten or twelve years ago. (How long has it really been? I was still using a film camera at the time).

The tour boat went back to the dock to disembark the folks who only bought the one hour tour and load up another set of folks for the southern harbor loop. This loop took us under the San Diego

US Naval Ship Bob Hope (T-AKR-300)

Coronado bridge to Naval Base San Diego. I can identify the various classes of naval ships of World War II and describe their purpose and function. But modern naval vessels are a mystery to me, slab-sided, opaque, lacking obvious armament. But we did get to see a couple of helicopter aircraft carriers, a supply ship described as the Costco of the sea, a littoral combat ship (tri-hull, angular, loaded with stealthy attributes) and the Sea Slice, an experimental ship built by Lockheed which seems to be available for purchase.

Sea Slice – experimental littoral ship

Back on shore, we made a quick visit to Tuna Harbor Park. This little park is directly south of the Midway Museum. It attracted my attention because of the giant sculpture of the kiss – that famous photo of the sailor and nurse kissing on V. E. day. It’s called “Unconditional Surrender”. Also in the park is a set of statues – Bob Hope and an audience of fifteen life-sized bronze sculptures. Pretty cool.

After this, we piled back into the car and headed to Coronado Island

The Kiss

for lunch. We made our way to the Brigantine Seafood restaurant, across the street from the Hotel del Coronado. I couldn’t decide which fish to eat and ended up with their Steakhouse Burger – Grass fed California beef, smoked wild boar bacon, tomatoes, chopped lettuce, blue cheese, caramelized onions, white truffle-black pepper aioli. Yes, it’s wrong to have a burger at a good seafood place, but so it goes.

Next we headed to Point Loma and the Cabrillo National Monument. Ideally, we’d be there during low tide and wander through the tidal pools searching for sea urchins and starfish. The tides weren’t right, the parking lot was full, and my mom wouldn’t have been able to make it down to the water anyway.

So we went to the visitors center, enjoyed the view of the harbor and city to the east and the

Bob Hope entertains the troops

ocean to the west. The folks watched a short film about whales while Genae and I went to the lighthouse. There, we found a docent, or perhaps not actually a docent but someone dressed in period garb, knowledgeable in the lighthouse and its times. We had a nice little chat. His character wasn’t the lighthouse operator but a newspaperman.

I asked if he felt isolated there. “Look around you – there are lots of people!” He told us that in 1887, many folks would visit the lighthouse on Saturdays and Sundays, make a day of it. I asked if the water catchment basin provided a sufficient supply and he described the effort required to bring water from the nearest spring. Next I asked if he was a Cleveland man or Harrison man. He enjoyed the question, being in actuality not a newspaperman from 1887 but a former fifth grade history teacher.

We left the lighthouse and wandered along the paths. Past the old WW II gun emplacements, to the ocean overlooks decorated with a whale’s spine and kelp, to a nice view of the new Point Loma lighthouse. On the way back to the visitor center we stopped at a small blockhouse holding exhibits of the shore defenses – a 155mm artillery shell, a cross-section of the howitzer’s barrel showing the rifling, binoculars and telescopes used for spotting.

Old Point Loma Lighthouse

By now we’d managed to wear out my parents. We dropped them off at their motel and returned to ours. We’re in Old Town, so after a short rest we took a walk and looked for an interesting Mexican restaurant. We found ourselves at Café Coyote. I had enchiladas – one beef and one guacamole. I’d never heard of a guacamole enchilada before. Like the dinner in general, it was okay but nothing to write home about. That’s the thing about Mexican restaurants – it’s pretty easy to find average food but above average is fairly rare.

After dinner we walked up and down the streets of Old Town. Lots of Mexican restaurants, a few bars, a number of stores selling trinkets and souvenirs of the area. Kitschy stuff we’d never buy, but didn’t mind browsing.