edge of the continent

On Sunday, I felt like a-wandering and pointed my car in the general direction of Julian, a small town in the mountains east of San Diego that is famous for its apples in all their tasty permutations.

The two-lane highway dipped and rose and swung from side to side. It had been a year or so since my last drive out that way and I was startled by the bright green swaths of hydroseeding painted on both sides of the road. I hung a left at Santa Ysabel and was surprised to discover an asistencia, or sub-mission, of Mission San Diego de Alcalá existed just a few miles down the road:

It was founded in 1818 as something of a rest stop for folks on their way to San Diego. While the original adobe structures have long ago fallen into ruins, the reconstructed church, built in 1924, still stands in its place.

The chapel is flanked by a hall and another small building (caretakers quarters, perhaps?), as well as a tiny museum store, which was closed when I arrived. The museum itself is a small room in the chapel that is accessible from the outside and includes many great photos of the townsfolk and samples of the day-to-day items used by the locals.

No one was in the chapel when I entered; I didn’t see anyone else during my stop and it was rather nice having the place to myself. The chapel has some twenty pews and was decorated for Christmas.

Back outside, a small cemetery unfolds between the buildings and the highway, while the Grotto of Our Lady can be found between the chapel and the hall:

The museum highlighted the story of the disappearance of the church’s bells: the clappers were found some thirty years after the theft but the bells themselves are still missing. A replacement was cast in the early 90s:

The rest of the afternoon was spent cruising County S-2, ultimately to loop back around to Julian, which was thronged with weekend crowds. I drove straight on through that madness and headed home.

On Thanksgiving, my dad and I tried to distract ourselves from our impending post-meal lethargy by taking a drive along the newly-completed 125 freeway extension. That the toll was free because it was so shiny and new was just an added bonus.

Here is the bridge connecting eastbound Hwy 54 to the 125 south:

The FastTrak apparatus, dangling from above:

A nice stretch of undeveloped land in Chula Vista. I’m afraid that it won’t stay that way for long: even with the housing market crawling to standstill, someone is going to want to pave over and build up on it all. I’m still nostalgic for the days when this entire area was mainly green hills dotted with cows. Moo.

The toll booths on either side of the freeway resemble floating, dismembered hangars to me.

Another bridge, just before the highway ends at the 905 freeway. I’d need to check a map, but all I could see over the side are a couple of dirt roads running beneath it.

Finally, the end of the road. Head east to the Otay border crossing, and west towards the ocean.

It took a pair of unpleasant alarms to get me out of bed at four-thirty this morning. But the sun broke in a slow drawl above the mountains and into clear skies on the drive to Balboa Park, where my teammates gathered for the Susan G. Komen 5K Run/Walk for the Cure.

Our sixty-plus member team walked the course which started at Sixth and Olive on the west side, then looped us through and around the park. We were all psyched — giddy, even — to learn that the course included a stretch of highway 163, which runs underneath the Laurel Street Bridge:

Having the opportunity to stop and look up at the bridge without experiencing a flat or engine trouble was too cool for words:

That last hike up the Quince Street exit — one of my favorite freeway exits anywhere because it leads directly into the park — doesn’t seem like much of a climb when in a car, but the incline and the left-leaning tilt to the road mocked my fitness-challenged self. I persevered, though, officially out of a personal need to face the hill head-on, but privately because I really didn’t have any other options available to me.

Our team wore individually-decorated wings in honor of the coworker we had organized around, who has been a lifelong fan of Tinkerbell. I was rather proud of my winged cuteness, if I do say so myself:

Originally scheduled to take place a month ago, the event was postponed not long after the start of the October wildfires. Did I take advantage of the extra four weeks to walk, or to buy and break in better-fitting walking shoes? No on both counts. Do I regret those decisions? Yes. By the end of the walk, did I become rudely acquainted with muscles in my legs that I had hitherto been unaware of? Bloody hell yes. But it was a lovely morning for a walk, I had a great time chatting with my friends, and our team was able to raise over $7,000 for the cause.