We have officially finished our last day of service here in San Diego. Our last two days in Torrey Pines have been a little different than our time spent in Border Field State Park and Otay Lakes. While our other locations required more digging and manual labor, Torrey Pines State Reserve mostly required us to weed out invasive plant species that were preventing the native species from growing. This may not seem like hard work, but let me tell you. I’ve always thought of gardening as more of an older person’s activity because it always seemed so calm. How wrong I was. A lot of kneeling down and a lot of time sitting on bended knees are required for gardening and for someone with a bad knee, an iffy back, and an ankle that is currently being held together by pins it can actually take it out of you. It was fairly relaxing at times though to sit and pull weeds and watch the Navy planes and the Coast Guard helicopters flying in and out. It also gave me a lot of time to realize that my true dream in life is still to be a helicopter pilot, fear of flying aside.
This was all very peaceful until our guide told us to watch out for the snakes. My first thought was “Did she say snakes or cakes?” Of course, no one cares if you step on rattlecakes, so I figured I’d better keep an eye out for the snakes. Fortunately, no one ran into any snakes and no emergency room visits were required. Both of our days spent at Torrey Pines were half days, which gave us some time to relax and enjoy the San Diego area.
Prior to going to Torrey Pines we spent the morning at Balboa Park, a gorgeous place I never even knew existed and coincidentally also houses the San Diego Zoo. After doing some research, I discovered the park was set aside from early San Diego by city leaders for public use. Today, it hosts museums and international cottages with houses representing countries all the way from Argentina to Sweden and almost anything else you can think of in between. It even has different areas for performing arts including The Old Globe Theatre.
To follow-up our first day at Torrey Pines, we ventured to the National Comedy Theatre on the other side of San Diego where we watched different Improv groups perform. It was a nice way to wind down a week of hard work.
On our second day of work pulling out weeds at Torrey Pines, we spent most our day fighting off the “stinging nettles.” Stinging nettles are weeds that mean what their name says say. I still have the battle scars from when I reached into a pile of them to yank them from the ground. Gloves be damned! Even with the gloves those things hurt. But nonetheless, I did what had to be done in the name of weeding. After our second day at Torrey Pines, we ventured down to the beach for the second time, but not the last as we will be making one more stop by the beach before we head to the airport.
Packing in little day trips to the beach and kayaking on top of our service work have definitely made this week go by incredibly quick, and yet it seems like we took our first stroll down by the bay forever ago. With a bittersweet emotion, we decided to make a trip to Old Town San Diego and eat at the amazing Cosmopolitan restaurant. The restaurant has a mix of Mexican food and seafood, which pretty much are cure-alls for almost anyone visiting San Diego. I personally enjoyed the shrimp scampi with mushroom ravioli and jumbo shrimp – and when they say jumbo, they mean just that.
The Cosmopolitan didn’t end the night for us as we strolled around Old Town and listened to a mariachi band serenade us. As if the band was not entertainment enough, we were also entertained by a group of students forming a conga line. However, this was not a typical conga line as the leader of the group was flailing his arms and legs and throwing out moves that even the rest of the line couldn’t keep up with. I guess the atmosphere of the traditional Spanish villa atmosphere of Old Town really brings out the enthusiasm.
That’s about it for now. It’s been a pretty busy week for us and I am in need of some rest before we venture back to the frigid north on Saturday. I hope everyone’s spring break is winding down nicely and you’ll be hearing from me as soon as I get back!
Photos: Bridget Wilson
