Beach time!

It would appear that Gray is his father's child. He loves the beach and would stay all day, every day if he could. I, on the other hand, am so pale that too much sun is never a good choice. That and I'm not really a fan of being covered in sand for hours up to days (in the car, in your bag, in your scalp) after each trip. I try to be a good sport and go occasionally, but I would much rather just look at it than actually play in it. 

Pacific Beach is a tourist haven in the summer months, so we are usually driving around looking for parking or wading through a ton of people for a place to lay our towels out. I prefer going later in the season on a week day. There is generally less people out and the weather is usually nice enough to go at least a couple weeks out of every month. The one thing that is strange about the beach here is that it can be FREEZING in May, and warm in November. It is usually warm all summer, all year really, but the weather isn't 76 and sunny all year around like San Diegans would like for you to think it is. I literally wore a hoodie in late May this year to watch Josh surf. 

This particular day there were tons of dolphins in the water. It seems like I see dolphins fairly often down there, but Gray totally missed them this day. I originally saw one fin and got a little freaked out (I even know that if you see a shark you are generally ok. It's when you don't see them that you could be in trouble.) then I saw about 4-5 more pop up. They were surfing and playing along the beach. Josh surfs with them often enough, and I'm pretty jealous about that. Maybe not jealous enough to surf with him... 

Not sure if I shared these two photos below before, but I just love them so much it can't hurt to re-share them. California has beaches different from anything I've seen on the East Coast or the Gulf, but they are all beautiful in different ways. Pacific Beach is no different, it just happens to have a different vibe than most of the beaches in San Diego. 

Yuma

Josh went to Yuma for about a month for some weapons training. He was ultra busy, but Gray and I drove out into the dessert to visit him one weekend. A month isn't that long to be gone, but I think it's not fair to Gray or Josh for them to be separated for that long when we are so close (about 3.5 hour drive). 

Breakfast with Daddy!

Yuma is basically alone out in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't super easy to find something that we could do fairly quickly outside without melting. Josh had a roommate, so we didn't want to just take over while he was trying to study. That lead us to the Yuma Territorial Prison! It was a very interesting museum/prison from the 1800s. It was a very inexpensive little place to visit, and we all enjoyed it. Naturally after we looked around for about an hour, it was way to hot to stick around. We we went to a little sports bar and watched some football in the glorious air conditioning! 

Gray's sad prison face. 

Cells out in the middle of the dessert.
I'm getting hot just thinking about this place in the summer. 

Gray loved this bell because it was incredibly loud! 

After a day in Yuma, we turned around and came back to San Diego. We got to see some great friends that just moved out there and spend some time with Josh, so it was a great trip. If Josh has to go back out again for more training, I'm going to check into some indoor activities because it's too hot in the desert to spend much time outside. :) 

This is always my favorite part of the drive.
Imperial Dunes just over the California state line.

Exhausted after an action packed day!
Passed out in bed with his Bible and his Daddy! 

Fletch claims his Daddy's spot when he isn't around to do it himself.
We really need to buy Fletch his own bed...