Monday 14th September

Sadly, our last full day in San Diego and the last full day of our holiday.
:-(

We made the most of it though, with a visit to Mission Trails with Vinny.
Mission Trails is a huge area of mostly rocky desert with a beautiful lake and wooded area too.

It was HOT, so we didn't go for a particularly long walk. More of an amble, slow enough to stop and take everything in. It's great to go for a walk with people who are really into nature and know that you have to just stop and wait quietly if you want to see stuff. It's amazing just how much wildlife is all around you, if you stop and look.

At the car park and were immediately greeted with this sign.

Yikes! Though apparently, it's the baby rattlers you have to watch out for, as they aren't mature enough to know how to control their venom. If they bite you, they just keep on injecting. OK......
Luckily we didn't come across any rattle snakes, though it would have been cool to see one in the wild.

We saw lots of birds and very cool lizards.

There's a lizard on the fence post - honest.

There was talk of the possibility of mountain lions in the area - YIKES again - and how our mobile phones wouldn't work out there, and there's no-one around and so on.....
Vinny made us feel much better when he told us there's no point in running away from a mountain lion, because he's going to decide whether he's going to eat you, and running away isn't going to change his decision. If anything, running makes you look more like prey. Worth remembering.

Grooviest and scariest thing we saw was a tarantula hawk wasp. It's a HUGE red and black wasp, about 3-4 inches long. That's one scary looking wasp. Thankfully, unless you happen to be a tarantula, they'll leave you alone. They lay eggs in a live tarantula and the grubs eat it from the inside out. NICE!
Here's a picture I found on t'internet. Scary huh? My quite beautiful too.

After a nice walk around, we were all hungry and thirsty, so we headed into San Diego Old Town for lunch. As it was our last lunch together, we went to a nice restaurant and splashed out. We all had the veggie combo which was HUGE and delicious.

I treated myself to a margarita too. It was sooooo tasty.

We trawled around a few shops in search of some "Ass-Kicking Chili Fixins", but couldn't find any. Mark bought a groovy t-shirt, which must have been made just for him. It says "You can never have too many guitars!" Hahaha.....
I bought some trashy tourist stuff, some margarita flavour taffy to take back to the peeps at work and some really cool rainbow drinking glasses. MORE stuff to fit into the suitcases!
Jodi came home late afternoon, and while the boys chilled out I went to Costco with her. It gave us a chance for a little girly time together too. What a HUGE place! You have to buy everything in bulk. Crazy. I guess it makes sense when you're shopping for a family though.

In the evening we watched a crazy Japanese anime movie called "Paprika". It's an insane story about a dream machine that’s stolen and used to infiltrate people’s minds. Loved it. It made me want to see more movies like that.
Here's a synopsis I found on t'internet.

In this Japanese anime epic, humanity's last bastion of privacy has finally been infiltrated by technology, the world of our dreams. The story centers on a new invention called the DC-Mini. With this revolutionary device, psychiatrists are now able to enter a patient's dreams in a therapeutic setting. But when an unknown assailant steals all of the devices, using them to enter peoples minds enacting mind control, chaos ensues as dreams begin to bleed into reality, and the thin line between the conscious and the unconscious begins to blur. Enter a young female researcher named Chiba, who takes it upon herself to delve into the newly anarchic dream world in order to set things straight. In this surreal realm her name is Paprika, and she's out to save the world. Bursting with fantastic imagery and breathtakingly innovative animation.