San Diego our top favorites

When you say San Diego, people think about Sea World or the famous San Diego Zoo.   Our family opted to be more riskier and felt to be on a full on tourist-mode for a day or two.

The best way you can enjoy and plan your trip to San Diego is to go to Old Town San Diego and do the Trolley Tours. We highly recommend this to anyone new in San Diego. It will give you a chance to hop on and hop off on sites where you would want to stay and explore.

While on this trip and if you have children, the best place to hang out would be: "The New Children's Museum" situated near one of the drop offs of the Trolley Tours.  What we like about this museum is that the kids are allowed to tinker, play and paint all day long. It is an interactive museum that any kids from 9 months and up would totally enjoy. It is definitely kid-friendly place.

For historic landmark in San Diego, we picked the USS Midway museum, it is definitely a must see!! and you can truly appreciate the different war planes and somehow experience how it feels like to be in an aircraft carrier.

Lastly, both my kids love animals, and the best one so far that we were truly amazed by is the remarkable San Diego Zoo Safari Park. You can definitely ride on a safari ride and enjoy seeing animals run around the park.  We recommend sleeping and camping in the park if you want to splurge a little, but that takes an extra night and a sleeping bag.

Here are the links to these great places:

San Diego Zoo  Safari Park

 USS Midway 

Old Town San Diego Trolley Tours

The New Children's Museum

For lodging, we recommend the following:
Wyndham WorldMark Balboa Park San Diego, CA

For something in between Legoland and San Diego, we love the:
Grand Pacific Palisades

FALL weekender

For a weekender we picked the Big Trees Calaveras and the
Mercer Caverns as a family friendly place.   We love it
because of the adventure and the quaint town that takes you back during the gold rush era.   It is a best place and safe place to take your children for a quick hike and tour.
Our suggestion is to purchase a year long parking with the California Department of Parks and Recreations to get a great discounts.  If you have a 4th grader, your 4th grader is FREE of charge for the entire year.  Don't forget to pack your own refillable water container because you will need to hydrate.
My family enjoyed trekking under the caverns with a tour guide, trying out some gold panning, and the walk through the GIANTS (Calaveras Big Trees).   Total time spent- just one weekend short but very memorable trip.

MERCER CAVERNS


Suggestion for Lodging:
Worldmark Angels Camp

CALAVERAS BIG TREES

FALL!!!  Oh our favorite time of the year....  Fall is when the leaves change in colors,  the season is much cooler.  Personally, my family loves fall. Two of our favorite holidays that we truly enjoy are during the Fall season: Halloween and Thanksgiving. Busy as we may be, we still need some quick day trip during this season to unwind and make memories with our family.  Traditionally, my family and I love visiting some of the local farms, pumpkin patches  and get pumpkins to carve.   There is just something with the cool air and the smell of pumpkin, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice, apples and apple pies that triggers you to just pause and look at the changing leaves.  My 6 year old loves the hay ride and I enjoy seeing my children pick their favorite pumpkins.  It's a tradition that we look forward to every October- November.
Some of our past favorite places that we visited to get our pumpkin fix:

Tanaka Farms  www.TanakaFarms.com
Live Oak Canyon Pumpkin Patch and Christmas Tree Farm www.thepumpkinfactory.com
Pumpkin Festival at Cal Poly https://www.cpp.edu/~pumpkinfestival/
La Verne Heritage Foundation La Verne California
Oak Glen, CA