The Travels of Dawn and John: The Great West Coast Road Trip: Day 11

After eating yummy breakfast tacos at Palm Greens Cafe, we set out towards our final destination...San Diego!

On the way, we stopped at Wilson Creek Winery in Temecula for their famous almond champagne. I just had to do a tasting of their almond, sangria, mimosa and peach champagnes! Then we hung out on the grounds while I finished off a glass of frozen peach champagne (alcoholic slurpee!) and played played Bocce.

Temecula is very pretty and actually green! Plants and trees everywhere, which was stunning since we've been seeing dusty hills for days.

Yes, I did buy some! I'll pop it open on New Year's Eve.

An hour later, we were in San Diego. Our hotel room wasn't ready, so we went over to tour the USS Midway, a retired aircraft carrier.

San Diego is where Top Gun happens in reality, and it was so cool to stand on the deck where fighter planes once took off. In fact, the whole time we were walking around, this song was playing in my head:

It was such a large ship, and John and I were both awe-struck. Too bad I'm too old to join the Navy. It would have been cool to work on a ship like this. I don't think we were cut out to be pilots, though. We did the simulator and both felt a little motion sick!

We can pretend, though. Here's John sitting in the cockpit of a F-8 Crusader.

I prefer the WWII fighter plane, the Corsair.

Up on the flight deck, we got to see many different planes and helicopters. There were retired Navy pilots giving talks about the dangerous take-off and "controlled crash" landing procedures.

Missiles

I'm in the mood to watch Top Gun right now

John being the "shooter".

The F-14...where are Maverick and Goose? Iceman?

Cute little pilot jacket in the gift shop for kids:

In the park across from the ship, stands the imposing Unconditional Surrender statue (a replica of the famous Eisenstedt photograph of a soldier kissing a nurse on V-J Day).