Four-n-More: Torrey Pines

The next day, we visited Torrey Pines State Park. This area has some great hiking trails on top of a row of cliffs above the beach that gives some spectacular views of the ocean.

We all enjoyed walking along the trails except for Ethan who chose to stay in the car since his foot was really bothering him.

The trails were beautiful this time of year and we even took time to smell the flowers.

Savanah was obviously happy to be there.

Vanessa happily showed off a cave that she discovered.

The girls both wanted us to take some pictures of them along the trail.

After hiking around the top of the cliffs, we headed down to the beach.

There was a cloudy start to the day and it wasn't really warm but, to us, it felt down right balmy. I noticed that all the other people on the beach were wearing jackets and long pants. Not us. We were all running around in swimming suits. It was the first time in my adult life that WE were the ones with the least amount of clothes on. Usually it's the opposite.

One lady came up to us and said, "Pardon me. I'm just curious.Where are you all from?" We replied, "We're from Utah. We left 10 inches of snow behind. We're really enjoying this warm weather." I think she still thought we were idiots. but that's okay, we were happy idiots.

Poor Esteban, I accidentally grabbed his old swimshorts, the ones that he thinks are way too short. It didn't help that AJ kept singing, "He likes short shorts." and we kept calling him John. (John Stockton, former Utah Jazz player, was famous for wearing short shorts.)

Vanessa loved writing in the sand. It's interesting that she goes by Vanessa but, writes her name Sarah. She knows who she is, so I guess it doesn't really matter. She's our little Sarah in the sand.

Let me just throw in a few more "Baywatch" moments.

I took some pictures of the boys as well. Of course, Ethan was right back in the waves, sore foot and all. They found a rock they would stand on while waiting for a wave to hit. That was the plan. Esteban had a very different idea.

Now, is it any wonder why they don't like my blog and the things I publish on the world wide web? In Esteban's defense, he pointed out that in the first photo the wave looked like it was over their heads. Ethan didn't care. In fact, one wave did go over his head. He didn't notice that his glasses were gone after that until I pointed it out to him. Yep, lost at sea. Some shark in San Diego is now wearing blue glasses.

We weren't the only ones enjoying "hanging" out at the beach.

After a few hours we headed back to the hotel to take it easy for the rest of the afternoon, and I needed to do some laundry. (There's just no way to pack a week's worth of clothes for 7 people.) At 3:40 Pacific Time, a earthquake measuring 7.2 magnitude hit 90 miles away in Mexico. While we were relaxing, the earth started to roll. Lights swung back and forth. Ethan grabbed the TV to keep it from sliding off the stand. I was on the other side of the hotel waiting for the laundry to finish drying. The quake seemed to last forever. (In reality it was only 25 seconds. It was a LONG 25 seconds.) Shortly after the quake, I returned to our room. While walking back, I noticed the hotel staff outside talking and the apartment complex across the street had several people out in the parking lot. I knew then it wasn't just one of those regular California earthquake occurances. The kids were really excited. We found out later that it was the strongest earthquake in that area in the past 18 years. There wasn't more damage done because the quake was centered miles beneath the Earth's surface. We felt several aftershocks throughout the rest of the day and we were awaken in the middle of the night with one. That was the first earthquake for all of us. It was the highlight of the trip. (Nice, everybody's favorite ride doesn't cost us a dime.)

We went down to the Harbor later that evening. Again, it was very interesting.