I Wonder as I Wander…

Our next trip was to San Diego—by way of Los Angeles—it’s just so much cheaper flying into LAX. And we’ve found a great Hampton Inn that’s close to the airport and is fairly reasonable.

We stayed in Oceanside, which is a little south of LA, for several days. We ended up changing hotels since I had goofed when I made reservations and checked us out a day earlier than we wanted and the hotel we were staying in was full for that night and we had to move to another hotel that was just across the parking lot. We visited chapters that were on the south side of LA—one was Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. It was about an hour drive and we visited with several chapter members and the advisor.

When it was time to leave, the advisor made the comment that she had to take a bus home because her car was in the shop and it would be a two hour trip. We offered to give her a ride—although it was about a 45 minute drive in the opposite direction from where we were staying. She was so grateful that she didn’t have to take the long bus ride, that she suggested we have dinner together at a great seafood restaurant. It was some of the best seafood we have ever eaten.

We moved to San Diego and stayed in a Hilton in the Gas Lamp District—which is a historic part of town with lots of neat shops and restaurants. Right across the train tracks is the convention center that has lots of steps going up one side of it and down the other. We climbed up and over them one day—Bob did it a couple days—if we would do that every day, we’d be in pretty good shape. There were lots of runners going up and down them as well.

It was ironic because Terry and Pam were in San Diego at a convention at the same time, so we got together and went to Old Town for lunch one day. How amazing when relatives from Atlanta and Minnesota would end up at conventions in San Diego at the same time.

We had Sunday afternoon free, so we went to the San Diego Zoo. I was all excited because I knew they had a baby panda and I wanted to see it. Little did I know, that they keep the baby out of the public’s eye for quite a while. They did have a ‘baby panda cam’ going, so you could see the baby sleeping, but you could view that on the web without going to the zoo http://www.sandiegozoo.org/pandacam/index.html Although we got to see other big Pandas and one was walking around and eating—a lot of time they just sleep.

It was really fun to go to the zoo. It’s the first time I’ve been to one in a long long time. I was amazed at some of the brilliant coloration of the animals. We also saw hippos in the water behind a glass wall—so we were very close.
The zoo has a lot of natural settings, so it’s not just a bunch of cages with animals. It also had a sky tram that we took over the tree tops which was very neat. We were there on Nov. 22 and they were just decorating for Christmas—it looked like many of the lights were in the shapes of animals, so I’ll bet it would be fantastic to be there when it was all lit up.

We got back home just in time to wash up some clothes and head out to Bottineau and Minot for Thanksgiving. Why stay home when you can go someplace? We had a wonderful visit with family, helped process venison, and did some quilting.