The Safari Day

Would this day be as epic as yesterday?

9:30am and the boys were still sleeping. That’s one of the signs of the apocalypse, I think.

They’d walked for hours and hours yesterday, ate what would feed a small village in Mexico, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t leap out of bed at 7.

Sleep is always good.

Like food.

I hadn’t gotten up either. I wrote in bed, having snuck my laptop out of its bag and tried to make some quick notes about yesterday.

However, we had to get going at some point.

The map: the key to any plan

Today was the Safari Zoo day.

No rides, as far as we could tell. Just animals.

Would that be enough?

We tried not to have concrete plans. Like 9-10, we eat, 10-10:15 boys brush their teeth, apply suntan lotion. 10:16 allow complaining about suntan lotion. 10:16-10:30, leave room, take elevator, get boys into car, 10:31-10:36 allow boys can poke each other in the eye while we check we have everything…

So we left it open. If we needed to see Legoland, again, we could have. But the boys wanted to do something else. Whew. I had no desire to return to Legoland. Therefore, the San Diego Zoo Safari was the choice.

We literally dragged the boys out of bed with promises of a visit to best waffle house in America. There was grumbling, some feet dragging, some complaining, and that was just me. Clearly the boys would have rather slept in until noon. I could totally understand.

Outside the weather still iffy. Grey. A bit chilly. No sign of rain.

But we weren’t fooled. We packed for all weather conditions. Rain jacket. Hoodie. Suntan lotion. First aid kit (which had come in handy yesterday when the youngest stubbed his toe so hard it bled.)

Best Waffle House?

So off the waffle house.

It was just down the road. We (and by ‘we’, I mean the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world and I) wanted to eat quickly and head on. The boys had other ideas. They had locked into SoCal time. Do things slow and easy, man, slow and easy.

However, we kept them focused and made a plan of amazing things to see.

• We would take the safari tour through Asia.
• We would see some amazing animals.
• We would not get out of the moving tour bus. Not even to pee.
• We would not throw our poo at any monkeys, giraffes or rhinos
• We would find hot dogs to eat.
• We would not make faces at the gorillas.
• No brother would push the other into the lion’s den.
• We would see if we could find a popsicle.
• We would have the bestest time ever.

The boys grunted which I took as agreement and we tore off at about 11.

The drive was eventless. The Prettiest-girl-in-the-world navigated brilliantly. We’d paid ahead of time so we wouldn’t get any roaming charges on our phones down in the states. That way we could use the gps, txt each other and, at least one of us could check facebook to make sure the world hadn’t actually ended and no one told us about it.

So she used her phone to help make sure we never got lost, even when that little dot had us about 2 miles from where we were.

But when we arrived, our plans to take the cool safari tour were upset by the gods of travel who had something else, something amazing in store for us.

*****

Thanks, again, to everyone taking the time to read my blog and sharing our adventures. Don’t be shy about sharing it. Blogs love to be shared. It makes them feel happy and warm and all snuggly inside.