San Diego Trip Part 1 (Travel)

On Monday I picked Rhayn up from school after a meeting for the next cookathon. We drove home and packed up a few last things for our trip (and grabbed our dog). Then we headed out of the house to my parents home. It was raining a little, and traffic was miserable. I was stuck in one lane and ended up unable to get onto the interstate. It took us an extra half hour to get to our destination because traffic was miserable.

Upon arriving, we dropped our dog off at my parents’ house then went to my brother’s house for a family home evening. The only people missing were Will and Dacheese’s husband.

My parents were driving to California. I had invited them along, offering to pay for the hotel room if they paid for a rental car (although we ended up taking their truck, since gas prices had dropped. I think my dad said that he only put $70 in gas in for the whole trip because the average gas price was about $1.70.) We left their house around 8am, leaving two dogs in the care of my brother Ender.

At a rest stop.

Our trip out was nice, we stopped and geocached a bit. Checking out some interesting sites like the city of Felicity, CA or “The Center of the World” which is in its early stages, but will some day be a fascinating monument.

Felicity, CA

We also stopped in the town of Ocotillo (aptly named as there were so many ocotillos growing around it, some of them were bigger than any I have ever seen.) The weather was ideal for a day of driving, slightly overcast with intermittent rain. Although a good portion of the trip was flat it was interesting to see many of the places you often hear about. Also, I didn’t realize how close the border to Mexico is to Interstate 8.

Fence along the USA/Mexico Border

My Mom showing my girls what you are supposed to do with Pringles.

We arrived at our hotel at 4:30 local time (having gained an hour in our trip.) Our room was little but we didn’t plan to spend that much time in it. For dinner we let Rhayn chose, and she wanted pizza. We looked a map that showed an Italian restaurant called Uno near us. We thought we could find it, but ended up not so much lost, more unsure of exactly where we were. After driving around, we settled on an NYPD Pizza (which was not like the ones in Arizona.) The pizza was filling but we had to get back into the car and try to find our way back to the hotel (insert crappy rap music here.) We were unable to find our way back easily (although we did find it eventually), however we did find Sea World, which excited us. We had planned to go there the next day.