Vacation

I'm taking today and tomorrow off from work as much-needed sanity days. Saturday a friend and I went down to San Diego with our cameras and visited a couple places I haven't seen since I was little.

With the help of Sally Ann, my friend's GPS system, we found Cabrillo National Monument at Pt. Loma and spent most of the day there. The monument has a tidepool area, a visitor center with views overlooking San Diego Bay and the city itself, and the original lighthouse, which hasn't been used for a long time. It was built too high on the hill, and when the fog would come in, the light wasn't strong enough to be visible.

After Cabrillo, we headed over to Presidio Park, where my brother, sister, and I used to roll down the hill whenever our family went there (though my rolling took the shape of a 'J' and I had to re-orient myself over and over). My friend and I didn't do any rolling this time.

Presidio Park is a monument to Father Serra, who founded the mission system in California, and the cross in my picture above is from there. As far as I know, the ACLU hasn't gone after this cross yet to have it removed.

Dinner was at Anthony's, on the Embarcadero, and we got a table by the window overlooking the cruise ship dock. Two cruise ships were in port, and we could see a crowd on deck wearing orange life vests for the emergency drill. In time the crowd disappeared, and after dark the ships left port. We tried out the nighttime setting on my camera and got bouncy images of the cruise ship lights, one of which I like as an off-beat kind of picture.

It was a glorious day, with photogenic skies. I took pictures with travel articles in mind, and my friend took pictures with scrapbooking in mind. We're both thrilled with our results.

But the best part of the day was spending time with a friend. No itinerary. No demands. No stress. There have been too few days like this, and I needed it.