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.
Post a Comment