Old Town, Mines and Apple Pie

We woke up Saturday in San Diego, prepared to end our little family vacation with a full day of sight-seeing.

After breakfast and packing up the car, we went to the Old Town area, a deceptively large complex of historic buildings. It's a state park, with docents and museum displays in the old hotel, schoolhouse, adobe hacienda and storefronts.

We spent a couple of hours here, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Violet loved the shopping part - they each picked out some tiny Mexican crockery for their Calico Critters.

 San Diego is where Stace and I met nearly 16 years ago, and he recalls having dinner at this Mexican restaurant with me, Jim and JT.

 Dia de los Muertos is coming soon, so much of the area was appropriately decorated.

 We said farewell to San Diego and headed about east into the foothills, to the sweet town of Julian. The town got going in the late 1800s and became a place on the map because of gold mining. We visited one of those mines, which is no longer operational but open for tours.

 We all learned a lot about gold mining - and it's not what I had thought!

Gold flecks existed in a vein of quartz running through the hard rocky ground. The vein was blasted out, crushed and processed, an intense production that petered out because the price of gold wasn't justifying the cost of extraction.

 Fourth-graders here learn about California history, and Cora is looking forward to Gold Rush days in the spring. She took special interest in her mining education.

 Here's the huge machine used to crush the rock in the gold extraction process.

 We went back into Julian, which after the gold boom became known as an apple-growing region. Apple pie shops abound, and we couldn't leave without sampling one for ourselves.

It passed muster.

The town has been voted one of the best main streets in California, and I had always wanted to check it out. But, being a three-hour drive from home, it hadn't made sense to do so until this trip.

We got back on the road around 5, and with a stop for dinner on the way, were back home to our kitties and fish by 9.

A lovely time had by all!