This always happens to me.  I have the best intentions of keeping up with my "journal" in this space, and then I'm so busy vacationing (vacating?) that I miss a day, which becomes two, and....

Well, this is my attempt to get caught up.  We had a busy day today (more on that later) but are now back at "home" in El Cajon relaxing and recovering from the 100-degree heat.

(In case you're wondering why so much improved punctuation, I'm typing this on my computer rather than my Bluetooth keyboard, so the shift key works much better.)

Anyway...  Where did I leave off?   I think I covered Thursday and Friday (I did tell you about the Zoo, right?).  So now for Saturday.  We are in the are for almost a full week, so we decided to do the big park days (Zoo and Safari Park) on weekdays, and save the weekend for lesser excursions.  Summer is the high season, but I figured weekends would be even busier, so Saturday we decided to go to Old Town.  Old Town is the area where San Diego began.  It became a ghost town after the "new town" (now downtown San Diego) was established, and then it became a historical site.  I posted some photos yesterday on my Facebook page; since they are on my phone I don't have good access to put them here, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  So to speak.

Anyway, we were still waking up early, so we got into Old Town around 9 AM and got a prime parking space in a free lot - huzzah.  We went to the information booth to find out what there was to do.  The parking lot was off the beaten path a bit, and most of the places didn't open until 10, so the girls were a bit confused as to what we would be doing.  I only had a vague idea, so after talking with the information booth guy, I bought us tickets on the Old Town Trolley Tour.  Genevieve wanted to go to one of the museums in Balboa Park, but since I'm the only driver, I didn't want to drive over there and find more parking, so I figured the Trolley would be a nice way to get there, in a hop-on, hop-off sort of way.  The girls (especially the younger one) were a bit grouchy (she's not a morning person) so we were all a bit out of sorts by the time the next trolley arrived.  I sat behind the girls at one of the openings (no glass, better photos) and we waited for... whatever came next.  The information person said it was a money-back guarantee, so I figured, what the heck.

It turned out that the older male driver, whose name was "Philip, with just... one 'L' - still Phil" (which he said at every available opportunity, until we were all saying it along with him by an hour into the tour) was a retired missionary to Japan, and retired teacher, and he was charming and just corny enough, but really knowledgeable (as one would expect).  We were about 15 minutes into the tour when my younger daughter leaned back and said, "Can we ride this all day?"  I was very happy that it turned out so well. 

The Balboa Park stop was third from the last stop (which was Old Town), so we ended up on the trolley for a good 90 minutes, listening to interesting facts about the airport (single busiest one-runway airport in the US, with flights taking off every 90 seconds), the military bases, the Coronado Bridge, architecture and history of downtown, average rainfall in August (0.07"), etc.  It was really neat, and the kids didn't want to get off, especially as there was a pretty good chance that we would get a different tour bus driver for the last two stops, but we disembarked anyway.

There was an artisan show along the road we took to the Visitor's Center, with painters, jewelers with wire pieces, and a man selling ceramics.  I am a sucker for a nice ceramic mug or  bowl, so we picked them up and held them and admired them, and moved along.  We passed the Sprekels Organ Pavilion, a huge open-air space with a pipe organ on a large stage with semi-circular architecture flanking it.  Someone was playing a piece I didn't recognize, but it was impressive.  It was probably 1/4 mile from the Visitor's Center to the Museum of Man, which my elder daughter had researched a bit and wanted to visit.  There was a special exhibit (which cost a bit extra) on "Cannibalism: myth and legend," which she wanted to see.  I wasn't particularly chuffed about that, seeing that the "edible" chapter in Mary Roach's otherwise very entertaining book about cadavers made me rather ill, but we opted in because she was really interested. 

The museum itself was pretty simple; less occupied than the Public Museum of Grand Rapids.  It had very "interactive" exhibits, including one on monsters.  There was a giant dream catcher at the end of that exhibit which invited people to write their "biggest fears" on a paper feather and attach it to the dream catcher.  The first one that caught my eye simply said, "laundry."  I can see where that might be a big fear for someone....

Among the other exhibits was one called Post Secret, in which people are invited to send a post card with a secret they'd never revealed, anonymously, to the collector.  It's made into an art project, so the secrets are "illustrated" in a fashion.  There was a collection of them in one portion of the museum.  As you can imagine, many of them were quite depressing, but a few of them made me laugh.  We didn't last long in that exhibit.

There was an exhibit on race, one on ancient Mayans, one on the indigenous peoples of the San Diego area, the Kumeyaay, and one on animals and their relationships with people, so quite a diverse offering in this museum.  We were tired and it was close to 1 PM and I was HUNGRY (having been up since 4:30 AM again) so we left he museum to get lunch, managing to find some pretty good sandwiches for not too much (my kids do realize we're spending their inheritance, I think).  It was a good call to eat before we went back in to the cannibal exhibit, I think.... 

The exhibit was some of what one would expect, with stories about explorers, early evidence of cannibalism, and musings about whether "cannibal" was just another epithet (such as "savage") without any evidence to support that certain peoples were actual cannibals.  The thing that disturbed me the most was the idea that since these unknown early peoples were shunted into "non-human" or "less human" categories by the explorers/missionaries/whatever, then even if they WERE cannibals, is that so bad?  As if the mislabeling of a category of humans justified whatever actual horrific practices they engaged in.  They mentioned the fact that the Europeans were engaging in similar acts to the human sacrifice and flaying of live people that the Aztecs did at that time, so who are they to criticize, because after all, the Aztecs "ritually removing and eating hearts... did it out of intense religious obligation: they believed that human sacrifices were responsible for the sun rising each day."  Hm.  Just because someone believes something strongly, or because it's a sanctioned cultural practice, doesn't mean that it's morally acceptable.  I'm sure you can think of some examples yourselves. 

Anyway, the spin on this made me uncomfortable, as did the later exhibits talking about which shipwrecks ended up in killing a crew member to be eaten, and the part about the Donner Party, plus the "edible human" "medicinal: section, which I had to skip because of revulsion.   The museum had an interactive exhibit with plastic bottles hanging on the wall into which people could put slips saying whether they would eat someone or starve to death - some of those entries were kind of funny, actually, but by then we'd had enough of that.  One part that I did think fascinating was a short film on the survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force plane crash in the Andes in 1972.  I wondered how the survivors could make themselves eat another person.  The story was riveting, and very personal.  I still think I'd rather not eat someone else, but I've never been hungry enough or in a position to make that decision.  I hope I never am.

Whew, sorry about that.  It was a rather intense experience.  After that we decided not to try another museum, but to walk back to the Trolley stop and head for home.  On our way we stopped again at the ceramics booth and ended up buying three little bowls from the artist, who was a very personable fellow.  We will enjoy eating ice cream out of those bowls, I think.    It was only a few yards to the Trolley stop from there.  There was an employee standing nearby to answer questions; she was also quite friendly and we chatted until the trolley showed up.  And Guess Who was the Driver?  Philip-with-only-one-L-still-Phil!  We were excited to finish the tour with him, which lasted another 45 minutes or so.  We saw the hill up which Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun raced a motorcycle, and Little Italy, and a few more things. 

Once we got back to Old Town, there were a lot more people there.  There was a demonstration of historical arts, such as quilting, basket weaving, and spinning wool thread on hand drop-spinners (whatever they're called - see how much I learned?)   I felt sorry for the people in period costumes because it was almost 90 degrees.  They were in the shade and there was a nice breeze, but still....

We got some specialty sodas from a place called "Old Town Jerky and Root Beer," which had more kinds of root beer than I had ever seen.  I like root beer, but wow.  The girls don't like it, but they found some other sodas so we bought two 6-packs of choose-your-own so we could each have 4.  One of the ones we bought was called "Leninade" and the bottle says "Get hammered & sickled"  and "A taste worth waiting in line for" and "a party in every bottle."  I was amused.  And the soda was pretty good.  We drove home about 1/2 hour and chilled out.  I made burgers for dinner and we watched "National Treasure" on Netflix (there's an account for guests here), which my elder daughter had seen parts of in school, but we'd never seen the whole thing.  Not bad. 

This has been long enough.  I will continue with yesterday's installment (which I anticipate being much shorter) another time. 

love
wendy