Scooters & Sea Lions

If your parents, like my dad, ever get tired of visiting you in the city where you live (and to be fair I cannot blame them for LA is a tiring place), a fun thing to do is to meet them in other places and have an adventure for the both of you. My dad attended a weeklong conference in San Diego for work at the end of last month, and, lucky for me, he decided to tack on a few extra days so that we could explore.

Last year, we spent my 30th birthday trip together at Mammoth Mountain, but this time we took a sunnier route… or we mostly intended to, but it’s actually been pretty dreary and cold down here in SoCal for the past month— it even snowed?!

No matter! We didn’t let the rain or grey skies ruin our plans to go out in the Gaslamp District. I put the cap on sober January when we found a trailer park themed bar, and I lost my favorite ring when I got too enthused about arcade basketball.

By day, we rented Bird scooters for dad’s first time and took a pretty long ride (for scooter riders) up the coast to La Jolla. We got up close and personal with sea lions. They’re near enough that you can just about reach out and touch them, if you’re in the business of disturbing nature’s peace, so obviously it was the highlight of the trip, if not my entire life.

After we had scootered back down, we took our chances at spotting some whale migrations at the Cabrillo National Monument. Unfortunately, whales were not in the cards for us this trip, but we still saw some pretty nice views of the city.

Whale sightings or not, it was an excellent opportunity to spend a weekend out of town and an easy way to get some dad time in. I’m glad we can always find new ways make the most of our time together! I hope you’re finding some joy in these late winter days, too.