A San Diego staycation got her back to a happy place
On our recent vacation, my husband and I visited the Australian outback and an Asian rain forest. We ogled otherworldly leafy sea dragons, stumbled upon a majestic bald eagle and luxuriated in the hypnotic calm of a Pacific Ocean kelp forest. There was also time to visit a serene island paradise. Twice.
In other words, we stayed home. But when home is San Diego, a staycation can be your ticket to the mind and body reboot you could probably use right about now. Or a lifetime ago, give or take.
Way back in the Before Times — January? February? The dreamy blur that was 2019? — our family vacation plans involved airline tickets, aspirational itineraries and no masks. Could we swing Scotland? Or if not Scotland, then Portland maybe? Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, and we began to recalibrate. Portland in the spring became Pismo Beach in the summer, because surely everything would be back to normal by then. Or if not normal, than at least road-trip friendly.
But everything wasn’t back to normal. And the more my risk-averse husband and I thought about the challenges
of getting more than a few hours away from home — the perils of public restrooms, the great unknown of restaurant meals, the black hole of hotel life — our vacation plans became less ambitious. They also became a lot more focused. By September, our getaway hopes and dreams could be boiled down to six simple words:
Must. Get out. Of the house.
And that is what we did.
For one glorious week in late September, my husband and I closed the door to the home office we had been sharing since March to explore the foreign world that was San Diego life outside our lockdown bubble. After six months of going almost nowhere but Trader Joe’s, Barons Market and Target, we went to