Back in the USA!

We've been back in the US for two weeks now.  Clearing through customs was uneventful.  After the San Diego Harbor Police called customs for us, they were at the boat within 20 minutes.  They only cared whether we had any citrus or eggs on board, "no, sir!"  And since our most expensive souvenir was under $40, there was nothing to declare.  They didn't even come on board the boat - they only asked to see the passports and the people they matched.

Despite really crappy wifi at the marina, Dave downloaded enough information so that within 24 hours of getting in our slip, we were the happy owners of a truck (a 6 speed no less!).  

David took this photo of our truck and daughter from the flight deck of the USS Midway (more on that below).  

Then came the wonderful trip to Trader Joes for fresh produce, eggs, yogurt and milk.  Our son wanted a whole gallon of milk to himself.  We are all a little weary of the tetra-pack milk we've been drinking.  Never thought I'd miss a grocery store, but there you have it.  

We have had a lot on our task list.  Our daughter is nearly done with 7th grade - just waiting for her test results.  Our son is days away from taking his last tests for 5th grade.  The goal is to be done before we leave San Diego on the 24th or 25th.

The boat is clean (even more so due to over 2 inches of rain), and parts of it have been serviced.  There are still about 20 items on the to do list.  We want it to be ready for Dave when he returns to sail it back to San Francisco.  We both have cell phones again and Dave has put together a trailer to haul all our stuff.

More interesting though, have been our tourist activities.  During a visit to Cabrillo National Monument, we learned that we practically followed Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's trip from Barra de la Navidad to San Diego Bay.  He has the distinction of being captain of the first European fleet to set anchor in the bay.  We also enjoyed touring the wild side of the park and seeing the tide pools.  Our next excursion was to an antique car show and a pond the city created just for model boats.  The model sailboats we watched were quite impressive with their Mylar sails and highly reactive sail trimming capability.

Several days later, we showed up at the aircraft carrier, the USS Midway, at 10 when they opened and stayed until 4:30 which is half and hour before closing.  We highly recommend touring this ship if you are ever in San Diego.  It was decommissioned in 1991 after 46 years of service.  Volunteers have done a wonderful job recreating various scenarios aboard ship, the cafe' has tasty food and the docents were awesome.  We especially enjoyed talking to docents that had worked on the Midway or her sister ships.  After all this time, their enthusiasm is still contagious.  I especially enjoyed going to the starboard engine room and hearing the fellow say it was "his" engine.   The four of us also paid a little extra to fly in the full-motion simulator.  Way fun.  Flying barrel rolls was much more fun than I expected, even if we were technically supposed to be in a dogfight.   I was glad my son wanted me to fly so he could control the guns. 8-)

Checking out one of several planes on the maintenance deck.

Sometimes I wish our boat had a brig for misbehaving people....

Chow time!  Not trivial when the ship's crew ate 1000 loaves of bread per day and 4000 pounds of fruit and vegetables.  

Our son pretending to work an electric typewriter.  Remember those? 

Our daughter (foreground) checking out the flight deck.  Our son is off to the right.  We all wore headsets and carried pre-recorded tour information.

Our son at the controls of a T-4 (I am sure colleagues will correct me if my memory is poor)

Our daughter got to try her hand at the helm after the docent beckoned her.  We all appreciated seeing the charts with planned and actual course plotted.

The folks with different color shirts under the bunting are cardboard cutouts explaining the shirt color designations.  No, red shirts were not expendable (as in Star Trek).  The tour included time in this tour (see the helm picture above).

One of many cool planes.  

Several days after the Midway, we went to San Diego's Balboa Park to see the museum of Natural History, also called the Nat.  The first two levels contain many well-done exhibits and the whole thing seemed very new.  We especially enjoyed two of the movies that are part of the ticket price (we didn't see the third).  The third floor contained a bunch of skulls from the size of a grain of rice to that of a big horn sheep.  They have a glass container filled with a skull and beetles (don't recall which kind) that eat the skin and tissues.  The naturalists at the museum use these beetles to do their "dirty work".  Cool.  

This coming week includes a trip to Legoland, packing, electrical work on the throttle and helm.  Then we leave for Arizona to visit Dave's mom.

Ciao for now.