San Diego Day Trip

Monday I headed down to San Diego for the day to visit a few friends. I was hoping to "accidentally" run into my friend Whitney (from London) at the Mormon Battalion Historic site where she serves part of her mission, but unfortunately we did not cross paths so I will have to try again another time. I did manage to meet up with Amanda again, and we toured the Mormon Battalion site together.

I also grabbed breakfast and did a little shopping with Alyssa in the OC on my way down, which was great because she's heading back up to BYU on Friday :(

Tyler was working in the OC on Monday and I gave him and his colleague a ride down in the morning and thus needed to spend the entire day in San Diego. I ended up killing time by touring the first California Mission, Mission San Diego de Alcala, and wandering around Balboa Park admiring the architecture.

Here are a few pics from the day-

Irvine Spectrum Center:

The Irvine Spectrum Center is a huge outdoor mall where Alyssa and I met up for breakfast at 8:30am. Because it was so early the place was completely deserted and it was soo beautiful. I usually don't like malls, although outdoor ones aren't too bad, but I couldn't help but love the mall when no one was there. It was surprisingly peaceful :)

Mormon Battalion site:

Mission San Diego de Alcala:

Balboa Park:

Tyler

Last nite Tyler and I went out to dinner and while he waited for me to finish getting ready, I found him 'riding' my bike in the front room. He was looking around at the map and the room while humming and ringing the bell like he was out on a real ride. I thought he was pretty cute, and I'm glad he knows how to entertain himself :)

3 Happy Years

Tyler and I celebrated our three year anniversary yesterday!! Of course, Tyler had to work, but since I'm still unemployed I lived it up by getting a massage after a nice long morning run and then I settled down to watch one of my favorite movies, "While You Were Sleeping," in the afternoon. Tyler had a big, beautiful bouquet of flowers for me when I came to get him (that he sent one of the new analysts to go pick up for him since he was so slammed at work....nice) and after we put them in some water we headed out to dinner.

A couple of months ago I was driving around near the airport and came across The Proud Bird restaurant. We decided to eat there for our anniversary because they have a small collection of old aircraft on the property you can walk around and look at and, best of all, it's located right next to one of LAX's major runways so airplanes are landing right next to you all nite. We saw everything from those tiny United propeller planes to the big British Airways and Virgin Atlantic 747's. If you know anything about Tyler and I then you will know we LOVE airplanes so it was awesome. As we were leaving the restaurant we found out that the tables next to the window have a headset that you can put on and listen to air traffic control during dinner too. Pretty cool, but we'll have to do that next time.

After dinner we headed over to Cold Stone for dessert. We thought about being crazy and running out for a late movie after that, but Tyler hadn't been feeling very well all day, so we just called it a nite.

Tyler asked me on our way home from dinner if it felt like it had really been three years or if it seemed like less time. I told him I felt like we had been married for at least seven or eight years, probably because we had done so much in just three years. We tried to figure out what the three best things we've done over the past three years were and, other than our wedding day itself, we both loved our trip to Boston and our trip to Paris. I also loved our time in Chicago (and would move back in a second :), but Tyler said a favorite moment for him was riding the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland together. But really, I've loved it all because I love him!! So, Happy Anniversary to us!

Me and my pretty flowers. Our waitress was not a good photographer and Tyler wasn't looking so hot cause he was feeling sick, so we don't have a good photo of us together to share, but we'll work on it :)

Wrap-up

Bonaventure Cemetery

Alright, it has been almost a month since Tyler and I got back from vacation so I think it's time I finally wrap things up. There were a couple of other things we did that didn't really fit into the other posts. We saw the Yorktown aircraft carrier, visited Charles Towne Landing (where the first settlers actually settled), Bonaventure Cemetery, and several of Savannah's historic town squares.

We also ate a LOT. I wanted to try every Southern dish I could, but unfortunately I never had gator sausage, fried green tomatoes, or catfish. I've decided to save those for some future trip to New Orleans, along with jambalaya and gumbo. We (mostly I) did have hushpuppies (yum!), local shrimp and mussels, okra, grits, fried chicken, sweet potato pie (several different kinds), pecan pie, boiled peanuts (so sick!), and cornbread.

We found some really good places to eat and few....not so good places. Here's the rundown just so you know:

• Hyman's Seafood (Charleston)- Sooooo good! And at each table they have a marker of which celebrities have sat at that table. Tyler and I ate here twice and sat where Barbra Streisand and Mel Gibson sat :)
• Hominy Grill (Charleston)- Yuck, yuck, and yuck.
• Toast (Charleston)- Good and cute little breakfast place. I really liked the sweet grits here.
• Kilwins (Charleston+)- Best. Ice cream. Ever. They have several locations around the U.S., but they're mostly in the East/South and the closest one to us is Fort Collins, CO :( But if you get a chance to go you HAVE to try the raspberry sherbet and the Mud ice cream. They also have really good homemade fudge and caramel apples! I'm not even sure how many times we went here, but it was a lot!
• The Lady & Sons (Savannah)- This is Paula Deen and her sons' restaurant. The food was fine, but nothing special. Tyler and I both think the food wasn't worth the price, so we say skip it.

Here are a few more photos for you to browse. I really liked Bonaventure cemetery cause it was sooooo pretty. It isn't super big, but it is old and overgrown and I'm positive it's been used in a thousand movies.

I also saw another one of those Indian carvings. I think I've seen four now.... so only like 46 more to go :)

Bonaventure Cemetery

Bonaventure Cemetery

Yorktown- I couldn't get the whole ship in one shot and I'm not sure why, but all these pictures turned out very blue :/

Front of the Yorktown

Gazebo and small clearing surrounded by oak trees at the Charles Towne settlement. It looked like a beautiful place to have a wedding reception.

Coastal trader ship replica at Charles Towne Landing

Colonial bowling in action

Peter "Wolf" Toth's South Carolina Indian carving at Charles Towne Landing

A pretty sunflower in the Charles Towne settlement (FYI: They had some palisade walls around the settlement which would have looked like those constructed for the original settlement, and somehow I didn't take any pictures of it. I'm kind of bummed, because they did look very cool. Very Pocahontas-esque :)

Fountain in one of Savannah's historic squares

Historic square in Savannah

Savannah church

Historic square in Savannah

A Southern Plantation

Middleton Place Gardens- all the oaks trees were just dripping with Spanish Moss.

Tyler and I visited two plantations in South Carolina and they were both great. I think our favorite was Boone Hall because the house tour was interesting and because the drive leading up to the plantation home is lined with huge, beautiful oak trees. The Avenue of the Oaks was actually one of my favorite things about our entire trip! It was so gorgeous and I still want to go walk down that lane and have a picnic everyday. I also liked that Boone Hall is still a working plantation and there is a farmers market next to the property where you can get whatever fruits and vegetables are in season, freshly picked from the farm that day. Boone Hall also has a large pecan (pee-can) grove, which was once the largest pecan grove in the world! Yummy!

The other plantation we visited was Middleton Place, which has huge beautiful garden and some flooded rice patties. It is also a working plantation and it had lots of farm animals as well as vegetation. The gardens were pretty, but the most exciting thing at Middleton Place was the wild gators swimming around....oh, and snakes. Cue Tyler:

We were walking along the water (top photo), and as I looked out over the water I noticed what I initially thought were a little set of eyes above the surface. I pointed them out to Kate, but we both assumed it was probably just a branch. I decided to throw a stick near it to see if it would react or if it really was just some inanimate object. It was a perfect throw--of course--that landed right in front of what turned out to be the alligator's mouth; it quickly lunged for the stick. The little guy--couldn't have been longer than 4 feet--started moving towards the shore slowly, and immediately Kate was no longer comfortable standing where we were. I proceeded to hear a lot of "Oh my gosh... oh my gosh... oh my gosh..." etc. We tried to get a picture as he came closer, but by the time I had calmed Kate down and convinced her we were in no immediate danger and then tried to get the right lens on the camera, it had disappeared into the reeds. We moved on.

We continued toward the end of the plantation and there happened to be another small pond. Excited from our previous experience I was all eyes for more fun lurking in the water. Sure enough there was another one. This one was easier to spot as it was larger and its eyes and parts of its back were showing above the surface. Again Kate: "Oh my gosh... oh my gosh... oh my gosh..." etc. Again me: "Let me throw a stick at it!" This time I wanted her to get the action shot right when it went for the stick. I threw, but this one didn't even flinch. It started to swim towards us, so we let it be.

As the map didn't show anymore water along our path I figured our fun for the day had ended. Just then as we were walking I hear--you guessed it--more "Oh my gosh... oh my gosh... oh my gosh..." etc. The difference was that as she stopped right in front of me she reached back and before I knew what we were stopping for she had this death grip on my forearm. You'd think my first thought would be to quickly scan our surroundings for whatever imminent danger befell us. Instead I was too busy being impressed by Kate's unexpected strength as she squeezed my arm. Finally, I interpreted her scared mutterings and gestures and looked under a nearby bush and saw a snake sitting still, looking at us. Needless to say we survived and passed on the other side of the path cautiously.

I found the whole experience amusing; Kate, not so much. Though she laughs about the experience now, let's just say she was less than happy any time I made a hissing, snake-like sound the rest of the trip.

Middleton Place- I like this brick wall that ran all throughout the property.

Middleton Place- Mr. Alligator

Middleton Place- the Wood Nymph.

Middleton Place- flooded rice paddies. I love the clouds!

Middleton Place- Tyler's really rocking the Trump hairdo.

Middleton Place

Middleton Place

Middleton Place- most of their farm animals were pretty normal and I'm still not sure why they had a couple of water buffalo. They definitely didn't do much.

Middleton Place- the barnyard. They had some adorable, muddy little piglets, but Tyler didn't love them as much as I did and vetoed their photo going on the blog :(

Avenue of the Oaks (Boone Hall)

Avenue of the Oaks (Boone Hall)- none of these photos do it justice, so you'll just have to trust me when I say it was gorgeous!!

Boone Hall- the old slave cabins.

Boone Hall

Avenue of the Oaks (Boone Hall)

Avenue of the Oaks (Boone Hall)