San Diego Trip – Day 1

This year our summer vacation consisted of a trip to San Diego – June 23-27. (Click Here to see photos) It's only a 6 hour drive, so we decided to rent a car. By far the best deal I could find was from Thrifty down by the airport. Now that I-10 is under construction and it's only 45 MPH for much of the way, it's a bit of a hassle to get to the airport. But we went down there Friday night and picked it up. (Got a Chrysler Pacifica – very nice).

Our original plan was for us to pack up Friday night and Saturday morning, take Kolton to his final T-Ball game at 10:00 a.m. and leave from there. That didn't work out. We spent all morning packing and we didn't leave our house until noon on Saturday. Sadly, Kolton missed his final game. Oh, well.

But we were on our way. We had packed sandwiches and snacks and started eating them about the time we got to Casa Grande. Believe it or not, our first stop was at the Yuma Palms Shopping Center, just before entering California. The last time we drove to California, I think we stopped every hour! This was a nice change – we were making good time! We filled up with gas at Sam's Club ($2.84 a gal), then went to Target to use the restroom, get Icee's and popcorn for the kids, and soda for us.

We thought we might be able to go the rest of the way without stopping, but about 45 minutes from La Mesa, Kolton informed us that he had to go to the restroom, and it was urgent. “My bladder is like a balloon!”

Unfortunately, his timing wasn't so great – we had just passed a rest area about five minutes earlier. The next exit was for Pine Valley, CA. After we pulled off, we came to an intersection and saw the Pine Valley County Park – surely there was a restroom there. As it turned out, the park is on the honor system – you are supposed to pay $3 per car when you enter. Since we would only be there five minutes we respectfully declined. The place was packed and we couldn't even find a parking spot. So we parked illegally in front of the dumpsters, used the facilities and went on our way.

About 6:00 p.m. we arrived in La Mesa and met Kristina's grandfather and his girlfriend, and Kristina's aunt and uncle. We had dinner with them at the Optimist Club's annual Spaghetti dinner.

After that, we drove to the DoubleTree Hotel in Del Mar. We got a REALLY good deal for the hotel on Priceline. ($60 a night!). Since we checked in so late, we got a room with just a queen bed and a sofa bed (room #202). The room was in need of some refurbishment, so we asked to move to another room the next day (with two queen beds). One advantage or #202 was that it overlooked the pool so we could pick up the free wi-fi signal – we couldn't get that from #225 since it was across the hall.

We settled in as best we could, watched a little TV, and got ready for the next day: our trip to the world-famous San Diego Zoo.