Lions and Tigers and . . .  Guitars??

 We spent an enjoyable day at the San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park.  We wandered around the zoo for about 4 hours.  They have a bus tour that sort of takes you around the perimeter of the zoo so you can get the lay of the land so to speak.  Then we walked around after to get a closer look at the animals.  There is also a tramway that went across the zoo way up high so you could get an aerial view.  These things were included in the admission so that was cool!

 There were a lot of koala's.  They are rather solitary animals and each was snoozing in their own tree.  So cute.

 They call this panda Mr. Wu and he was born in July 2012.

 This elephant was busy covering itself up with red dirt.
Apparently they do this to protect their skin from insects
and the sun.  As their skin is so thick that sort of surprised me. 
Apparently each elephant poops about 300 lbs worth
a day!  They have 7 elephants - that's a lotta poop!

These giraffes posed for me!  How cool is that!  The youngest one is only a few months old.

These meerkat were really fun to watch too.  One was always on guard duty.  What I liked about this zoo is that they are committed to saving animal species world wide utilizing their expertise in animal care and conservation.  They have a huge research facility and they strive to protect rare and endangered wildlife and habitat.  They have partnerships with other facilities and research centres.

They have helped to breed and return endangered Glapagos tortoise to the wild among other animals at the zoo.  These tortoises are believed to be over 100 years old. 

They grow a lot of the food right on sight.  This is a type of bamboo. They also have tons of beautiful trees and flowers throughout the zoo.  They have banana trees and other plants that can be eaten by the animals.

 At first I thought these were avocados but on closer inspection - nope!  I saw them on another tree and they burst open with what looks like cotton.

 No idea what this beautiful little flower is either.  The tree was loaded.  Awesome

this was a fairly large tree with tons of these pretty fuscia flowers.

This is a pretty little area inside of Balboa Park.  It was a colorful courtyard surrounded by little shops selling all types of art.

This is a Moreton Fig tree.  I think it is the largest tree I have ever seen.  I took one with the cars in front to show how big the canopy really was - 145 feet in fact.  It is 80 feet high and the trunk is 42 feet wide.  The root system was really interesting and a lot of it was above ground.

Balboa Park covers 1200 acres and has 15 museums and 85 cultural organizations, theatres, gardens and the zoo.  The Spanish/Renaissance architecture is really ornate and it was a great place to just walk and enjoy.

 Today we went on a tour at Taylor Guitars.  They started by showing us all the beautiful woods that they use in their guitars.  A lot of them are stored outside under tents as the humidity in San Diego is very low.  The air smelled amazing with all the kinds of beautiful woods.

 They take all of the scraps and turn them into mulch which they donate.  Some wood (in that little orange container) may have glue or some sort of coating on it that makes it not good for mulch.  The employees can help themselves to this for their fireplaces.

 This company is not only very particular in how they make their product, but they appear to be a really great company to work for.  They even have ping pong tables in the break room for staff to enjoy.  They have 3 shifts a day and make 300-500 guitars a day.  Some custom made guitars can cost as much as 30,000.00

 It was fun to watch how they inlay the abalone or wood around the sound hole and other fancy designs in the neck of the guitar.

 This wood is ebony.  Apparently very few ebony trees have pure black wood and they cannot tell if it is black until they kill the tree.  The owners of Taylors went into business with the growers of this tree and use all the beautiful grained wood not just the pure black.

 This lady was putting in the frets by hand, she then puts them in a press one by one.

 this little "chip" goes on the inside of each guitar so they know all the details of when the guitar was made.

 This is where they are bending the sides.  And our tour guide said, they never break any.

 This is a 500 year old piece of wood that they are planning on using for some kind of promo.

 They use glue that has an additive that shows up under a black light so they make sure no glue is on the guitar before it goes for finishing.  Pretty ingenious!

 This is where they were putting the outside binding around the guitar between the top sides and bottom.

 They even gave us these coasters which are actually the round piece cut out from the front of the guitar.

We continue to have warm amazing weather!  The last 2 days there were wind warnings.   There were hot dry winds coming off the desert and the concern is fire.  We did not notice too much in the way of high winds but I guess it depends on the area you are in.  It is so dry here and the humidity is only 7 percent  in a lot of the area so if a fire starts and the winds are high it is a real concern.  I bet I know a lot of people back home who would gladly take the dry, hot air right about now.