Honeymoon - Part 2 - San Diego

The second part of our honeymoon, which started by renting a Chevy Camaro at the Las Vegas airport, brought more adventures.

Not long into the supposed four-hour drive from Las Vegas to San Diego, we joined some traffic congestion from Californians returning home from the New Year's weekend in Vegas. Delays were compounded by snowfall in Southern California - yes, no typo there - of at least a half of an inch. Fellow motorists pulled off Highway 15 to take pictures and have snowball fights. We stopped a diner called Franky's in hopes the delays would clear out after a meal. The stories only got more complex.

Franky's overflowed with customers as the waiting list for a table stretched onto the sidewalk outside. We somehow slid past that line, and unknowingly grabbed the last two seats at the to-go counter. Kristi's trip to the bathroom revealed a worse predicament: no toilet paper. Knowing that the toilets would quickly clog, she went to one of the waitresses, and in typical Kristi fashion, offered to take a roll or four of toilet paper back to the bathroom. No problem, the waitress said, I'll do it.

With full buckets, we got back on the bumper-to-bumper highway, averaging 7 miles per hour. After we covered every conversation topic we could think of, Kristi began reading the GPS mileage. There's 9.6 miles to go...8.4....7.2 and so on. Our eyelids were heavy because it was 5 a.m. (!) when we closed in on The Welk Resorts in Escondido, Calif., a northern suburb of San Diego.

The Welk Resorts are, yes, named after Lawrence Welk, who bought the property in 1963 for $100,000. Their last appraisal revealed the property is now worth $2.9 billion. Oh, the beauty of real estate investments. The Resort featured several pools, water slides, fire pits, golf courses and full kitchens and living rooms. It was great to be away from the hustle and bustle of Vegas, but close enough to drive into San Diego each day.

We went on a trolley tour on Tuesday that visited 11 landmarks around San Diego, from the harbor, to Coronado (a large penisula), Little Italy, etc. On Wednesday, we visited the San Diego Zoo, and all of its critters and rugrats. On Thursday, we went back to Coronado for a nice dinner at the Coronado Boat House. It was also warm enough to go swimming in the pools, jacuzzis and water slides. Awesome.