San Diego Vaca - day 5: Sea World

Whenever Team Oakley has enough free time and money for a vacation, we always head to San Diego. We are both from there, and still have family and friends down there. And we love spending all our time with the ones that we miss so much, but it is not often that we actually get so spend time alone with each other. But this trip was a bit different. Rochelle, Beka's older sister, knowing this, had gotten some passes for Team Oakley to go to Sea World. Sea World, for those of you who do not know, is a theme park of underwater adventures and sea life. Team Oakley had never even been to sea world together before, so it was a WONDERFUL blessing from Rochelle to give these to us. We had so much fun!

It was a beautiful day, and the park was so beautiful as well!

We saw some fun furry friends...

We loved this place. Otters have always been a favorite of ours.

This is Michael's "forbidden Reef" face :) and this is where you can touch some sea creatures...if you want to...which Beka Did not

Giant sting rays... that you can touch!

Michael was all about trying to touch them!

This was a cool wild bird just hanging out at Sea World in the sting ray exhibit...

This was a burrowing sting rey

koi

After Michael touched and touched and touched again, he somehow got Beka to try it..

And she was VERY apprehensive..

but she did it!

and this is her "gross I just touched that thing" face :)

I mean, would you touch this ugly mug? No offense Mr. Ray...

There were many nooks that you could walk to and just sit and take in the beauty...and the ducks.

We Then went to the underground part of the forbidden reef to see more ugly mugs.

Not this one though, Beka likes that mug :)

But not these so much...

And from ugly mugs to funny birds!

We stopped for an over priced drink...

and to stop and smell the flowers. It was nice to not be in a rush all day.

We saw fun decorations.

We went to many many shows that day. One of our favorites was a pet show. They had all these dogs, cats, pigs, and other critters doing some pretty fantastic tricks! We really enjoyed it!

After the show, we had some penguin fun!

We spent a while watching them. They were really fun!

From there we got to see the beluga whales. And yes, we both sand "baby beluga" the whole time.

The water and these creatures...it was just so pretty!

Then the majestic polar bears.

Mike and the polar bear. Who is hairier?

There was a big one laying right by a window.

From Polar bears to the giant walrus'. THEY WERE HUGE!!!

look at those tusks...

I think this is my favorite picture of all of the giant beasts.

Then there was this brave creature in the midst of that gigantic madness.

those are some massive chompers!

Michael was pretending :)

Then we saw some cool, smaller creatures.

They were very beautiful frogs. Their colors were so rich and vibrant.

Then, off to another show! This one was sea lions live, and the mimicked SNL, which is Beka's all time favorite show!

Team Oakley enjoying the San Diego sunshine while we wait for the show to start..ahhhhh :)

Then we went over to see the cirque show. This was the set. It was floating in the bay. It was a really cool show!

Then we got to touch some sea stars!

And see some pretty cool turtles..

Next we ate at the ship wreck cafe. It was VERY good food!

Then we went to Discovery Gardens. Beka wanted to go all day, so Michael was being supportive and excited for her!

Michael, being the compost master of the Oakley home, took some time out to do a little research on what is what in the compost world.

We caught this beautiful dove eating out of the bird feeder.

This was Beka's happiest place all day.

In a beautiful garden, under a tree :)

Off of the garden was a great place to take in the beauty of the San Diego bay.

Then came the sharks!!!

and big ole ugly fish!

Then we came in late to the shamu show. Shamu is the famous killer whale at the park.

awww, a tender moment....with a killer whale...

Belly slide

It's really amazing what they can get these massive whales to do!

Splashing the crowd

Big Shamu and little Shamu.

Then we hopped on over to another show called Sea Lions Tonight that made fun of all the other sea world shows! And it was pretty much as random as the photos make it out to be, but the sea lions were real cute!

smiling for the camera!

mimicking the cirque show

saying goodbye to the crowd!

From there we wandered around, and went to "journey of atlantas" and found these fun critters!

They were medium sized, but pretty fast. They would swim all around each room in their exhibit and back again. They were just swimming and swimming and swimming!

Here is Michael in front of a wonderful San Diego dusk.

We saw this amazing tree, and had to get a photo of it!

Night was closing in on us at the beautiful Sea World.

Before we saw our last show of the day, we could not help ourselves. We had to let our inner children out, and play on the playground!

We are trying to figure out which speakers talk to which speakers. Michael ran all over testing all of them until we figured it out...then we laughed through the speakers at ourselves, and moved on :)

After that we grabbed some hot Chocolate, and watched the rock and roll around the world show, and stayed for the fireworks afterwards. It was a great way to end a fabulous day to ourselves on vacation!

We really had a great time! Thanks to Beka's sister, Team Oakley got a good date in on our vacation. We saw much, laughed much, and had much fun.

Thanks for sharing this adventure with us!

Until Next time!

Team Oakley.