Sunday, January 22, 2012

SD, CA - High Tide, Farmer's Market and the Mormon Battalion

It rained yesterday, it’s going to rain tomorrow. We’d better get out and doing. And, I’ve got just the plan. We’ll start at the beach where the tide will be high, then to the farmer’s market and then to a museum. Ocean, food and history What could be better?

We began on Ocean Beach, a short drive from where we are camped. The sun was still behind the clouds and the sky was a steely grey.
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The high tide was at 9:24 and we got there at 9:30, just in time to see this rider on the surf. And, look, he’s our age.
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Next we headed over to the Hillcrest Certified Organic Farmer’s Market. What a fest: wonderful aromas, wonderful music and wonderful sights. I’ve never seen so many different flavors of hummus in my life. Have you ever heard of peanut butter hummus? Well, actually it’s pretty good. Now, the jalapeno hummus - uh-h-h, I’ll let someone else sample that.
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Here’s the street band which was featured and here’s a young break dancer, strutting his stuff. And, his younger brother at the bottom of the picture, was up next.
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Finally, we headed over to Old Town, once the beginning of San Diego and now more of a tourist area. Here is the Father Junipero Serra Museum, Heritage Park and the Mormon Battalion Historic Site Museum. We first toured the Serra Museum and learned about some of the missions in California. The original mission was on the hill here but, when they tried to haul water up every day and tried to grow crops here, they decided to move the mission to a flatter plain near the river about 4 miles away. The new mission they called the Mission San Diego de Acala and we toured this last year. The Serra museum was built in 1929 by a man named Horton, a wealthy merchant and philanthropist who then donated the building and the land to the city for a museum.

Down the hill is Old Town, the original San Diego settlement. Old Town itself has lots of old buildings, museums and tons of new restaurants and gift shops. We toured this last year also but not Heritage Square, a new section they are developing. When growth after WWII threatened several old turn of the century homes in other sections of San Diego with demolition, some far-sighted people, using both public and private funds, bought and moved them to this 8-acre site over a period of 25 years. A hotel chain then got involved and planned to turn them into very special rooms to rent. They were remodeling them extensively both inside and outside and wanted to open them as they were ready to go. There were some permit problems since the city wanted them to open all at once. Well, that was that, and now these marvelous old homes sit idle. The outside paint scheme is spectacularly authentic. They gleam in the sunlight. The roadway up is all inlaid stone and these rooms would have been something special to stay in while you were visiting San Diego.

Imagine staying in one of these homes and being transported back to a time of picket fences, stone streets and a slower pace of life.
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We found a book with a marvelous title in a gift shop in one of the homes.
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Last but not least on our list for the day was the Mormon Battalion Visitor’s Center, a new building designed to look old with the mission of telling what the Mormon Battalion was and how it contributed to the history of San Diego. Now, I’ve heard of the Mormon battalion but had no idea what it was. This VC was designed to tell the story and, along the way, possibly get converts to Mormonism.
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Being from Iowa, I’ve heard of the killing of Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois and the subsequent march of the Mormons through the southern half of Iowa to an area near Council Bluffs. At this point they requested help from President Polk to move west and establish American presence in the West. Polk countered with an offer of salaries, weapons, transportation west and uniform allowances if 500 men would join the army, march west and fight the Mexicans if needed. Brigham Young, the new leader, thought this a pretty good deal and convinced many to do so also promising them that they would not have to battle the Mexicans (And, actually, his promise did come true - they fought no battles.) Many wives also accompanied them as ‘laundry’ women. And, in one case, a 9-year old boy left the village, followed the army where his father was and caught up with it 9 days later.

It has been called the longest infantry march in American history, approximately 1850 miles beginning on July 20, 1946 and ended in San Diego on 29 January 1847. Later, some of them also were in Sacramento during the gold rush and found gold. Most of their salaries, their uniform allowances and the money from the sale of the gold were sent back to the rest of the group and this helped them move our to Salt Lake City later.

That’s the story and the museum told it well. I’ve seen lots of movies in lots of Visitor Centers but 2 stand out: one in the Texas Museum and this one. Both used multiple screens but this one was extremely imaginative. Here’s a row of pictures in frames. While we were all sitting there waiting for the presentation to start, suddenly these pictures came alive and they started telling the story.
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We then moved into another room in the Visitor Center designed to look like the supply room in a fort. Here was a window looking out into the fort (pictured below). Suddenly, someone came up to the window, tapped on it, one of our guides opened it and the person, a laundry woman, started talking to us. Also, while we were in the supply room, the guides dressed some of the kids in the group in uniforms.
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Here’s a copy of the type of pack that the men got - to carry everything they had with them, including the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Not much room here and those straps must have cut into their shoulders after a day of walking.
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We then moved into another room which was set up like a camp and we sat on logs in front of a tent, a conestoga wagon and a laundry line with a sheet hanging up on it. Suddenly the side of the tent, the side of the wagon and the sheet turned into screens and we watched a short movie of the Battalion moving across the plains. As I said, it was all very imaginative and really caught our interest. Marvelous way of telling the story.

At the end of the presentation, we strolled through the Old Town section, delighting in the aromas emanating from the myriad of restaurants in the area.

Pretty good day, lots of variety and we enjoyed it all.

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