I Love San Diego!

We have been in San Diego for the past few days and I have absolutely loved it! San Diego is an amazing place. I have been here a few times before, but didn't really appreciate the awesomeness that San Diego exudes. If you have never been here, then please put it on your list of cities to visit before you die. It's that good! God has blessed us with warm weather and sunshine; that is always a plus. I've noticed that I have more fun when the weather is nice. Funny how that works out:) The reason why I think San Diego is so awesome is because it is beautiful, tons of site-seeing, beautiful sunsets, beautiful parks, beautiful architecture, big city, but doesn't feel over crowded, and the list could go on and on. I don't think I would ever be bored if I lived here. I now understand why the people that live here never want to leave.

Alex and I visited Old Town San Diego, which has been very well preserved to it's original layout and style. The First mission in California was built there, but was relocated to a place 6 miles away from the town due to insufficient water supply. We had a real fun time walking around. Most of the shop keepers and museum employees in Old Town are dressed up in 1800s style clothing, which adds to the old town ambiance. Alex and I learned some old gambling games and I won most of the games; I guess Alex was running bad. We watched a few ladies make a quilt together, watched a black smith pound some iron, and sampled homemade deer and buffalo jerky. All the activities in Old Town were free. I love it when I can be amused for free. It's much more satisfying.

Quilt making

Old Cathedral

Black Smith Shop

Delicious, but weird combo

Gambling

We walked quite a bit through Balboa Park. The Park is right in the middle of San Diego and it is very beautiful. We enjoyed walking through a cactus grove and then walking by the San Diego Zoo. My favorite part of Balboa Park was the part with all the museums because the buildings that the museums are in are magnificently beautiful. Extremely detailed art decorates the outside of the buildings. It was an amazing place.

Crazy cactus tree. I've never seen anything like it

The museum of Man

Indoor Botanical Garden in the background

We also walked through the Gas Lamp district, which is more towards Downtown San Diego. The Gas Lamp district wasn't too spectacular, but still a very enjoyable experience. The bums like to hang out in that area, and it looks much like any other downtown area that has lots of old buildings and sky rises. On our way through the Gas Lamp area we walked through Seaport Village. It's a really cute village with little shops and restaurants. It has small town charm amongst a huge downtown sky scraper area. 

Seapoat Village

We did have a few problems with our van since we've been down here in San Diego. We weren't really sure what the problems were, but something was wrong. We got the oil changed and the mechanic told us that the suspension needed to be fixed because there was abnormal wear on the front left tire. Alex didn't pay much attention and we went on our happy way. Later Alex took a look at the tire to see how much wear it had and he said it looked pretty bad. So, we decided that we would take the van in to get that problem fixed. Then as we were driving the break pedal kept sticking every time Alex pressed down on the breaks. If it's not one thing then it's another, right? We seriously do not want to pour money into this van if more stuff is going to keep on going wrong. Alex said to me. "Anna, before we take this to another mechanic we have to decide how much we are willing to spend and if it is going to cost more than we want to spend, then we might just have to sell the van and take a trip to Australia or Europe." I just sat there silent for a while. I'm not ready for our across country trip to be over, I still have so much more I want to see in The U.S., and I don't want to have to change our blog name. I suggested that if the cost of the repairs are too much, then should we take the train all over America, then we could still see most of the places we want to see in the U.S., but before we start spitting out all these alternative traveling ideas we need to pray and let God guide us. Alex was pretty excited about the train idea. We prayed for a while asking God to guide us in the right direction and to fix our bus and I just felt like God was going to take care of us. I felt okay with whatever direction he was going to lead us.

We decided on a money amount that we did not want to exceed on repairing our van and today we took our van to a mechanic for an estimate. Praise God it wasn't anything crazy! The suspensions were fine, we just needed to re-align the wheels and the brake problem only needed some WD-40. Wow! That was pretty amazing! The cost of that repair was only a tenth of what we were willing to spend. So, we are back on track with our travel plans and tomorrow we head east.