Lotsa train rides this week; we’re on a first-name basis with the Coaster ticket checker. Monday we went back to Balboa Park to eat lunch at the beautiful restaurant near the art museum and then to visit the art museum. (Charlie’s favorite thing to do!) Tuesday we took a trolley (bus) driven by Brian O’Brien around San Diego including Coronado Island. The beach on Coronado behind the fancy hotel there is huge and beautiful. We had packed a picnic lunch and ate it on the beach, being careful not to get sand on our hands and grit in our mouths. Today we took Amtrak to San Juan Capistrano to see the mission and hopefully the swallows which were scheduled to fly back to Argentina today (according to the website). However, it seems the swallows fly back whenever they damned well please, and we didn’t see any. They also aren’t nesting at the mission anymore since there are other buildings in town now where they can nest. It was fun though, and we learned about Father Junipero Serra, a name I hadn’t heard since grade-school religion class.
Tomorrow we fly to Portland, Oregon where we’ll spend the night before driving a rental car three hours southwest to Yachats (YA-hots). There we’ll spend eight nights in a small house near the sea before flying back to Colorado for a couple days and then on to Phoenix for almost six weeks.

Even the traffic lights are quaint.

This stone church at the mission collapsed during Mass 200 years ago as the result of an earthquake. Forty-three people died in the church.

The gardens there – much of it xeric – are all maintained by volunteer gardeners.