SAN DIEGO

We awoke Thursday morning, hit the hotel gym for a quick work-out, and were ready to set out for San Diego and the last leg of our trip, but our luck changed quickly.  The first unhappy incident occurred when our rental car got pulled up to the front of the hotel in L.A. (valet only at the hotel we stayed at), and a bottle of our newly purchased Sonoma wine fell out of the rear passenger seat, cracking on the driveway in front of the hotel.  This happened because the valet driver 'peeled wheel' when pulling the car up thereby knocking the box of wine on its side, allowing the bottle to slide out of the box when the door was opened.  Very sad.  We then decided it was time to send the wine home, and avoid any other problems with it.  BUT, we quickly learned that one cannot ship wine without a license.  Somehow all the wineries in Sonoma neglected to mention this important detail to us.  Undeterred, we ate something (at possibly the most poorly managed Panera Bread in existence; luck was really not on our side), and got on the road to San Diego.

That's when the truly unthinkable occurred: we ran into the FIRST traffic of the whole entire trip!  Instead of taking just over 2 hours as anticipated, our drive to San Diego took 5 hours.  Needless to say, we were not pleased.  All our grand plans for the afternoon in San Diego were thwarted.  We fortunately recovered with a great dinner with Amy's friend, Jenn, at En Fuego in Del Mar, with great margaritas and Mexican food, including fish tacos for Amy (a major goal

 for San Diego)!

We got up early Friday morning in order to head to Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego to

 attend a boot camp graduation and relive a bit of Dave's history.  We made it onto the base easily and walked around taking in the base and the marines doing drills.  But we were

 confused to see that the parade deck was not set up as usual for graduation and there were very few visitors.  We inquired at the base museum and were told this was the first Friday morning in some time with no graduation.  (Just our luck!)  However, we did get to enjoy the museum, which was showing a detailed movie of the boot camp experience, and walked through the store where Amy got a t-shirt and sticker for her car.

Our next stop on Friday was Torrey Pines golf course.  After the hole in one at Pebble Beach, how could Dave get this far and not try to golf at Torrey Pines?

When we arrived,

we were told there was at least a 2 hour wait for a single to walk onto the course.  So we had a nice lunch at the Lodge, and then Dave hit the driving range.  Just as we were about to throw in the towel and leave for another adventure (possibly the zoo), Dave's name was called.  Amy decided to finally grace Dave with her presence on the golf course for the first time during the trip, so we headed down together to

 the first hole.  The views from the course were spectacular, as the edge of the course was cliffs down to a beach, and Amy took some great wildlife photos while on the course.

Our last night of the trip, we had another great dinner with Jenn.  This time we went to Wine

 Steals, a wine store with a restaurant, where one can try a huge variety of wines very

 reasonably and enjoy cheese, fruit, pizzas, and more.

Sadly we had to finish dinner to head back to the hotel and pack up.