We’re off to San Diego. Drove through the burned areas around routes 78, 79, and interstate 8. That was an amazingly damaging series of fires the area had in October of 2003. The devastation is complete. Charred trees on charred ground. Apparently the heat was so great that even seeds and roots are gone. We got to our motel, the Old Town Inn at 4440 Pacific Highway, San Diego, but were too early to check in, so I dropped Arthur, Kerstin, and Leonard off in Old Town, which is about 1 block from our motel, and went searching for a place where I could either buy another 256M flash chip for my camera OR download pictures to a CD so I’d have room to take more pictures. Not easy to do on a Sunday morning. Finally found a Kinko’s to do the downloading and met the crew back in Old Town for lunch.

Leonard really did a great job in finding our hotel. It was super close to San Diego's Old Town, yet a nice quiet oasis. It was also inexpensive, and yet provided a better than average continental breakfast.

Back to the motel to check in, have a swim, do laundry, and meet up with Sue and Skip Trueblood. Sue used to be married to Nils Eckfelt, Kerstin’s brother, so she is Kerstin’s ex-sister-in-law. We went out to dinner at the Fish Market in the wharf area.

Skip, Old Town Inn

After dinner the four of us (Sue and Skip went home) drove over to Coronado to see the moon over the city, but we didn’t stop and enter the hotel.

Old Town, San Diego church

Went early back to Old Town to pick up the Old Town Trolley Tour, which took us to the waterfront, the hotel center, downtown, the Coronado Hotel, the San Diego Zoo, the Balboa Park Museums, and back to Old Town. The only stop we took was at the zoo.

We spent all day at the zoo and only saw a corner of it. We first took a motorized guided tour around the whole zoo, which helped give us an overview. Then we split up, with Kerstin and Leonard going their way and Arthur and I going our way, promising to meet for lunch at the Tree House Café.

Arthur at the zoo

Arthur and I checked out two walk-through aviaries, some other bird exhibits, the gorillas, and some cats.

We watched the hippos play in the water with a ball. The display allows you to watch them underwater. On land they seem clumsy, but underwater they are graceful like slow-motion ballerinas.

We also walked through the Panda exhibit. They had a mom Panda with a 6-month baby boy born last October, but I couldn’t get a good picture of them. I did get a good picture of another adult Panda, though.

After lunch at the Tree House Café we checked pigs and gorillas. Arthur saw the Polar Bear Plunge and then we rode the Skyfari Aerial Way down to the entrance of the zoo and over to the Wegeforth bowl amphitheater to see the sea lion show.

After the sea lion show we were tiring out and ready to go home, but had 30 minutes before the next Old Town Trolley would come, so we looked at some of the reptiles in the reptile house — some huge pythons and some smaller but deadly vipers — and I bought some postcards for the kids. Home, exhausted and overheated. Arthur said I was red as a dried tomato. Arthur and I elected to immediately jump in the pool to cool off. What a relief!

Leonard and Kerstin Trawick, Arthur Luehrmann, Gisela Caldwell, Martha Luehrmann We met Gisela Caldwell for drinks at Qwiigs in Ocean Beach, then she took us to Ortegas in Ocean Beach for a super good Mexican dinner.

I got fish in a super sauce of garlic and onions, green peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, green olives, spices, all wrapped in banana leaves. Gisela had fish tacos to die for, which she shared with me. Arthur and Kerstin both had an incredible dish with eggplant, salmon, and lord knows what else. Home to bed.