Going old town like its 1884..

Oct. 1, 2013

This morning since we were staying another night in San Diego, we weren’t in a rush to pack up and have breakfast. This motel is definitely on the cheap side and the breakfast was limited to pastries, cereal, and waffles. I had a waffle and then felt pretty gross afterwards, probably because our breakfasts over the last several days consisted of mostly carbs, which I don’t normally eat very much of. As we were leaving the dining room and throwing away our trash, and old lady asked me how the waffle machines worked, so I told her how to use the batter dispenser, pour it in the middle of the waffle iron, and flip it over so the timer would start. She was grateful for the instruction and asked if I could do it for her, so I did, and as we were leaving I reminded her to listen for it to beep when its finished, and she looked at me all startled and said, “oh I’m sorry, I thought you worked here”. I’m really not sure what gave her that impression, maybe because I cleaned up my own trash?

Anyways, by 9:15am we were ready to start our adventures in Old Town. On our way across the street from our hotel we located the skunk that had met its tragic demise the previous evening. The real mystery is given the fact that the corpse was in the middle of the lane of traffic, why was it already so flattened? Common sense tells me that motorists would be able to easily avoid hitting the skunk with their tires, and yet it was a pretty nasty (and still stinky) mess.

Unfortunately everything was closed until 10:00am, so we walked up the hill to the Mormon Battalion Memorial Site and Precidio Park Mission. By the time we made it back down the hill, shops were open and we began Ben’s favorite holiday pastime, aimlessly poking through little shops and looking at things we have no intention of purchasing. Old Town is actually really quaint as all the shops are in reconstructed buildings and all the staff were wearing period costumes. 

Every few shops is actually a little museum and entry is free. We wandered the rest of the morning away, I bought a pair of earrings and the shop lady gave us a coupon for a free appy at one of the restaurants in town, which we had already planned to hit up for lunch.

We weren’t really hungry yet even though it was probably close to 1:30pm, so we went to find the Mormon Battalion Historic Site as I had picked up a brochure that said they had free gold panning. The ladies here were also dressed in period dresses and invited us to take a tour. We ended up being the only ones in our group. Our tour started with our guide telling us a little bit about the Mormon Battalion, which was a group of 500 Mormon men (and some women and children) who were recruited by the government in 1846 to march west from Iowa to what is now San Diego. As the Mormons were fleeing persecution (they didn’t go much into why they were being persecuted, but I can think of a few reasons just off the top of my head…) and were planning on moving west anyways, this offered them an opportunity to not only create a wagon trail west, but also be paid by the government for their service in the army so their families could buy supplies. 

The entire presentation was extremely well put together and had us moving through different rooms and displays that followed the theme of the battalion’s journey west. Because our tour group was so small, Ben even got to dress up like a soldier; the musket with bayonet attached was almost as tall as him! The musket by itself was my height and heavy, I can’t imagine carrying that thing through the mountainous desert.

Anyways, the Mormons made it to the coast without having to fight any battles, however many of them became sick and died from malaria and/or the medication they were treating all their illnesses with, which turns out contained arsenic. Plus they had built a road that was passable by carriage and allowed pioneers to make their way west; it was also pretty much the same route that the railway followed when it came west. At the end of the presentation we got an old timey photo taken and we got to pan for gold (pyrite).

Now we were hungry so we went to Café Coyote and enjoyed a delicious Mexican meal, complete with a giant margarita to share. It was probably 3pm by this point and because we started with the margarita, we were both feeling a little tipsy by the time we left. 

We wandered through some more shops as well as a stable that had several original carriages and freight wagons from the area. But due to us both having a touch of the idis, we were both ready for an afternoon siesta. 

So we headed back to our room, where Ben promptly fell asleep and I did a bit of research on what else we should go see in San Diego before I took a nap as well.

When we woke up we figured we better go out otherwise we would just end up watching TV for the rest of the day, which would be a waste. We found a nearby Trader Joe’s and picked up some snacks for the road and then headed down to the waterfront to check out some of the ships docked there. 

Of course we were too cheap to pay to go onto any of the ships, but they were pretty impressive nonetheless. We saw the USS Midway, which is an aircraft carrier as well as the Jewel of India and some other ships that were part of the maritime museum. Plus we had a nice evening stroll along the boardwalk, which apparently is where everyone in San Diego goes for their evening run.

By the time we got back to the car it was dark, so we headed back to our motel to watch a couple shows and went to bed.