So Cal pt 3 Missions and Mexico

Day 3 of our So Cal trip (July 7, 2010) was reserved for some California History (although the history lesson would take on a slightly broader scope than we had originally planned). We started the trip out by visiting the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia. It was very cool and it made me wonder what it would have been like to be there back in the day. Of course the photo model on this excursion was none other than 4th grader Abby Green (thus making these shots applicable to her California history project).

So I expected some church history, but I expected it to be Catholic church history. Turns out Mormons have a little history here too. The army barracks in the 2 photos above housed members of the Mormon battalion. On the back side of the barracks was a small square monument with the following plaques:

look carefully at the refection. Do you see my head gear?

 The next part of the journey was to drive to the U.S.- Mexico border. Ace, my brother in law, was particularly curious to see the border. Personally, I was a little scared. I didn't really want to go. I was afraid we'd miss the last turn off or something and end up in Mexico with no way out or anything. I don't know. I just wasn't really enthusiastic, which is why what happened is kind of funny.

Construction going on at the San Diego Temple. We have a history of visiting temples when they are closed for renovation.

We made it to the last exit before the border without any problems. It was very clearly marked. There wasn't any way to mess up. My fears turned out to be unfounded.

The border fence and Mexico beyond

One for the 4th grade project

This is probably where the trouble started. Once I was so close to the border, I felt this overwhelming urge to cross it. I mean wouldn't it be cool for the kids to be able to make casual remarks like, "When I was in Mexico last summer . . ." I mentioned that it would be cool to just cross the border real quick, just to say we've been outside the country. In my defense, someone could have quickly squashed my burgeoning enthusiasm simply and completely by saying, "We can't go into Mexico. We don't have passports." Instead, they mentioned that they had heard that if you're just visiting for the day all you need is a driver's license. Well, I had a driver's license baby! Game on.

Again, this is the place where someone could have said, "I don't know Bill. This seems kind of crazy. I think crossing international borders is pretty serious and we should probably have some definitive answers before we do something like this, especially with the kids." Instead I got, "well, let's go take a look."

As we approached the border, let me first describe what there is not: There is no sign whatsoever that says "In order to return to the United States you must have a U.S. passport." Sure, there's a fence and a revolving gate that only allows one way passage. Definitely, there is a sign that labels the "International Border." But again, there's nothing at all about what you need to get back to the U.S. And, there are all kinds of people just nonchalantly passing through those revolving doors.

The path leading to the border gate

So as we're walking, we're talking about going through the gate. As I understood it, we were committed, the decision had been made. Apparently I misunderstood. As we got up to the gate, I decided I wanted a picture of the family coming through (by now, you know how important photographic documentation is for me), so I went ahead of them. Well, when I turned around after going through the one way revolving gate, they had stopped. They weren't coming. My mom did the loyal thing and followed me, but no one else.

One thing we had discussed on the way was how to get back once we had gone through the gates. You can't see the return gate because it's on the other side of the freeway. There was an overpass and so it seemed like you just walked over the freeway and there you were. We just couldn't see how to access the overpass. So the rest of the family wanted to know how to get back before they came across. (Talk about irrational!) There was some type of tourism booth a little further down, so my mom and I went over there and I asked how we get back to the other side. He gave us simple directions and it was just as we had assumed, and he didn't mention anything about passports or any other requirements (although looking back, I realize I didn't ask any specific questions about that topic either and he probably didn't think I would be stupid enough to come over without the necessary items--he was wrong.) So I went back to tell the family to come on over, but I had walked down a corridor that had a couple of armed guards and other military looking people, and as I approached the first, he told us we couldn't walk back that way. Thank goodness for cell phones. I called Rachel up and told her it was no problem and to come on over.

Here come the international travelers

This is a second gate after going through the corridor.

By this point I was a little nervous. (I guess my brain was starting to work again). Earlier I had been thinking about maybe doing something in Mexico, buying some food, something, but now I just wanted to make sure we could get back to our homeland (and hotel). We found the overpass and began to make our way back.

Notice the huge lines of cars going in one direction (towards the U.S.) and the empty lanes in the other direction. That should have been a clue that getting back wasn't going to be as easy as getting in.

At this point in the trip, I was feeling what I often feel when I'm nervous, so I started to look for a bathroom. Thanks to my excellent Spanish vocabulary I had no difficulty finding el bano (I know there should be a tilde, but I don't know how to do that). I did have difficulty however when I read the sign that said that it cost 5 bucks for caballeros (guys) to use a less than picturesque bathroom. I decided I was gonna hold it.

Here's the sign leading to the bathroom. Oh, does it say "restroom" in English, next to the spanish "banos?" I didn't notice. I was too busy reading espanol.

As we came around to the other side of the overpass, I realized that my decision to "hold it" may have been premature. We saw a HUGE line of people that looked like it stretched for at least a quarter of a mile. At first I wasn't worried, because I thought it was a line for the bus. There were signs that looked like bus signs. Then this older guy came up to us and asked if we wanted to take a taxi to the customs station (or whatever the official name is of the place where they decide if they're going to let you back into the U.S.). It seemed kind of scam like so I was going to say no, but my mom started asking how much. The guy said 20 bucks for all of us (3 adults and 4 kids) and he explained that we wouldn't have to wait in this crazy line. My mom went for it. (Bless her heart). We got in a big van; the guy we talked to took our money and got back out leaving us in the van with the driver and another Mexican dude who had some kind of a function in the taxi and one other gringo passenger--although he seemed pretty experienced and knowledgeable. The van ride was pretty short, covering the quarter mile or so to the entrance of the Customs station, but a little slow it probably took about 10 minutes. And the whole time it seemed a little shady and we didn't really know what was going on, although, I'm one to look at the bright side of things, and I thought it was pretty cool that we were listening to the end of the World Cup Semi-final between Spain and Germany. It seemed pretty cool to me to be listening to the game in Spanish in Mexico. (I was calculating how it would sound when I was discussing the World Cup and casually mentioned "Oh, yeah, I remember when Spain beat Germany. I was in Mexico and . . ."). Well, when we got to the building, the taxi guys let us out and we went inside and what we saw there was even worse than the line leading up to the building. There were tons of people in lines that wrapped back and forth between snaking lines of chains, like a busy Disney ride. Luckily, the taxi was our fast pass. We got to bypass that line and go through the taxi line and the only person ahead of us was the other white guy from our taxi. So this whole time, the question that was going through my mind was, "What's gonna happen when we get to the official and we don't have our passports?".

So we told the guy we didn't have passports, we had just walked across the border just to say we've been to Mexico, and we heard that all you need is a driver's license if you're there for the day. He told us that we were mistaken. That was no longer the case. He asked us if we had the drivers licenses. When we produced our licenses, he asked us what we had to prove that the kids were ours and not some kid we picked up off the street. So he's giving us the third degree, as they say, and is stone serious, but at the same time it seemed like he was just giving us a hard time to mess with us. So finally he tells us that what we did wasn't very smart. We should take crossing international borders more seriously and sends us on our way. HUGE Sigh of relief. For the record, my mom promised that we'd never do that again, (But I didn't . . .).

So the funny thing is that it seemed like we had just gone through the serious and lengthy ordeal and had been gone for hours, but after doing some calculations, we realized that we probably spent less than a half hour in Mexico.

In conclusion, it wasn't one of my smartest moves, but you know what, the Green family's international now: we went to Mexico for our summer vacation, baby!

So what does a family do after such a harrowing ordeal? First, we went to McDonald's, where there was, among other things, a bathroom that was free of charge--I made it. Then we went to the Mission San Diego, California's first mission (as you'll see documented below). The way I see it, we were just tracing the steps that the early Franciscan friars took when they started out in Mexico and then made their way to Alta California.  See, I was just trying to get my kids to have a little bit more of an authentic historical experience. That's just the kind of dad I am.

Mission San Diego

One for the California History Project

At this point,  you're probably thinking, "Wow, what a day the Green's have had. I'm sure they're done. I know I would be." But you know what, we'd been staying at Oceanside for 3 days and we hadn't been to the ocean yet. So that's where we went.

And while we were there, swimming and boogie boarding and just having a good time, we experienced an earthquake. Well, Rachel and my mom and my sister Kelly experienced it. The rest of us were in the water and didn't notice a thing. Rachel said that she was sitting on the sand and felt a rumbling kind of vibration and at first thought it was from a wave, but then realized it wasn't. She said something like, "oh my gosh, did you guys just feel that?" and Kelly, who is knowledgeable about a great many things, was the one who recognized the rumbling as an earthquake. And sure enough, later we heard that there had been a 5.4 earthquake, which according to www.nbcsandiego.com occurred
"about 13 miles north-northwest of Borrego Springs" and was a "trigger quake," an earthquake caused by an earlier earthquake that occurred on a different fault line, (but I have come to my own conclusions and will share them in the caption of a later photograph).

still shot of Jace and Meghan auditioning for Baywatch

Lennon and Josh running into the waves, while BJ apparently smells something bad (If you enlarge the picture you can kind of see some bubbly water behind him. I don't know if there's any correlation).

Lifeguard Nana and some happy kids (Ace included)

The most awesome picture of me ever! I look like Poseidon coming up out of the sea to wreak destruction on the puny mortals of this world. (I'm not the only one seeing that right?) In fact, looking back, I was probably the cause of the earthquake we felt.

After the earthquake we decided it was time to call it a day. Not that we were scared, we just felt like we had accomplished enough for one day. It was time to get some rest because the next day we were bound for Disneyland!

Stay tuned.