San Diego - March 24 to 27, 2013

We left early on Sunday morning and took an almost direct flight from Columbus to Los Angeles, only having to wait on the plane to reload passangers attempting to escape the 9 degree Colorado weather. As aside we seemed to be traveling with a semi-famous rapper named YG and his 'crew'. Polite young men, but very sleepy. Otherwise the flights were very uneventful.

We were greeted in LA with sunshine, palm trees, and a four door Ford Focus that had us quickly on the 405 speeding to San Diego (they sure do drive fast around these parts).  I didn't want to miss one minute of the Unclaimed Property Conference!

We stayed at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego with a view of the Pacific and across from the navel base.  The USS Midway and the San Diego Maritime Museum were only a few blocks away in one direction and the Gas Lamp District the other.

The UPPO conference was fantastic and while I am sure you want to hear about the nuances of ERISA's preemption of state unclaimed property law or considerations when participating in Delaware's Secretary of State VDA program, Molly and Cheryl had much more fun.

After waking up at 4:00 AM PST, Molly and Cheryl were first in line at Sea World when the gates opened. The highlight of the trip seemed to be Shamu and his babies. Turns out that Molly was wearing the same color of shirt as the trainers and seemed to have got the attention of one of the Orca's. If you watch the video, it seems to be following Molly's inadvertent commands. There was also a dolphin show kicked off by a seagull, a gondola ride over the park, and many, many animal exhibits.

The next day was the San Diego Zoo.  Cheryl and Molly took it a little slower in the morning and were not first in line for once.  As you see by the pictures, the highlight was the pandas.  Pandas everywhere. One interesting non-panda fact is that the zoo pairs baby cheetahs with a companion puppy of similar size and weight.  The two are raised together as a way to keep the cheetah more calm and make the dogs faster.

Evenings were spent at the pool, poking in shops, walking along the water, and enjoying sushi (one must have a California Roll when in California).

The final day in San Diego was also known as Cheryl's birthday! I had only had two sessions of the conference to attend and then we were on to Disneyland!