Julian!

For Lincoln's Birthday weekend (another random holiday we get off), my parents went to San Diego for the long weekend.  It was awesome because I got some much-needed time to myself and because they got some time away too.  As mentioned in earlier posts, I have been doing alot of things from my bucket list lately and my parents have kind of gotten into it too.  It's become a bit like their own bucket list and my dad, in particular, takes every chance he can get to help me check something else off of the list.  So, when he noticed that Julian, a little, old mining town near San Diego, was on the list, he decided to add that into their weekend, on Saturday, and invite me to drive down to join them for the day.  So, I went for it.  It turned out to be much more of an adventure than we had planned.  First, I had never been there before and had no idea where I was going.  Since I get lost pretty much everywhere I go, I decided to just do whatever my GPS told me to do.  Fool proof, right???  WRONG!!! My GPS told me to get off the freeway in Temecula and take highways the rest of the way.  Well, all of a sudden, I was not on a regular highway; I found myself on winding mountain roads with sharp turns and narrow passages on the edge of cliffs, without any type of railing.  I was supposed to be on this road for about an hour and a half and after awhile, I just thought...oh well, I'm just taking the scenic route and it's just part of the adventure.  Then, there was snow.  Yes.  Snow.  I had never driven in snow before and all of a sudden, it was everywhere.  Ummm...I didn't plan for snow, but I figured that I would come out of the mountains and the snow would be gone and it would be a bright, sunshine-y day.  My mistake was in thinking that Julian was going to be, roughly, the same climate as San Diego.  As I drove onward, the snow got thicker and thicker.  I was a little bit nervous about driving in it, but was in awe of how beautiful it was.  The white blankets of undisturbed snow were absolutely gorgeous.  

As I pulled into Julian to meet up with my parents, there was still snow everywhere and there were huge banks of snow down the middle of the street and on the sides of the road.  I called my mom and she told me where to meet them and, fortunately, they keep a bag of scarves, gloves, etc. in the back of their car, so I was able to use some of those.  I had a beanie and a jacket with me, but was happy to have a toasty neck  and hands.

The first thing we did was to walk down the main road and find the little bakery we had planned on for lunch.  We had to wait about 30 minutes, so we used the time to walk around a little and see what was there.  I found a little shop that sold accessories, like hats, scarves, sunglasses, etc. and bought a new hat there.  I was really surprised at how affordable things were there.  Usually, tourist attractions/towns jack up the prices of everything, so Julian was like a breath of fresh air.  After browsing for a bit, we went back to the restaurant for lunch.  We each ordered a caramel apple cider and were expecting a little Denny's size mug, but instead, they brought us these:

...and they were delish!

We also got some water to drink and they brought it in glass mugs shaped like cowboy boots!  SO cute!

I bought one from the restaurant as a souvenir for the day.

After lunch (which was so yummy), we walked around a little more and then called it a day, as far as Julian was concerned.  There are more things to do there, like a mine train, and some other tours, but we decided to save those for a day when we wouldn't have to walk around on ice and snow.  Here are a couple more pictures from our Julian adventure:

The place behind us is where we ate lunch.

The Town Hall has a little scavenger hunt you can do, but they were closed because of the snow, so maybe next time we'll do that.

My mom and I by this crazy-cool sign and a bunch of snow.

After leaving Julian, we went to the visitor's center for the Battle of Pascual, which I had never been to.  We also stopped at the San Diego Archaeological Center, but we missed it by a couple of hours.  I guess this just means we'll have to tackle it on ANOTHER adventure.  Shucks!  ;)

Here are some pics at the visitor's center:

We had a really great day together!