Home is Where the Burrito Is: Day 9

Yesterday was a late start, and a day of mostly being reintroduced to Southern California traffic.  However, after a crawl through Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego, we made it to our destination.  We saw another mission, a few famous beaches, and experienced a highly anticipated and mouth-watering carne asada burrito.  Now we're at our temporary home, at least for a few days until we head off to London, England.

A few minutes down the road from our hotel was the Santa Barbara Mission, known as the Queen of the Missions.  It was very large and is still an active congregation.  There are a number of Franciscan monks who still reside there as well, doing what Franciscan monks do.  The mission was very peaceful and had a garden, cemetery, and a church.  We learned that the skull and crossbones was the sign for a cemetery in Spanish colonial times, which was very interesting.  While walking among the graves of monks from two hundred years ago, the noonday bells started to toll, calling the monks to prayer.  It was neat to know that the same prayers prayed by those lying in the ground were at that moment being said by the living.  It reminded Brian of the Miraslov Pelikan quote, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."  The living faith was certainly alive around us in the cemetery.

After that deep spiritual moment, we had the opportunity to play around in the photo-ops provided by the Mission.

We continued along highways 101 and 1 and drove through Malibu, CA.  We stopped along the road to eat lunch, and enjoyed hearing the ocean waves crash against the shore.  Mandy took the opportunity to get some pictures of the shoreline and the city of Santa Monica in the background.

Ah, palm trees.  How we have missed you.  These were just inside the San Diego city limit.

Before we arrived at our destination, we celebrated our road trip by sharing a carne asada burrito at one of our favorite taco shops, Cotija's in San Carlos.  It was everything we had missed and for which we had salivated.













Thus ends our 9 day and 3,669.6 mile road trip from Ambridge, Pennsylvania to San Diego, CA.  We drove through eleven states, saw numerous landmarks and amazing sights.  We've been farmers, campers, tourists, pioneers, explorers, cowboys, hikers, history buffs, and beach bums along the way. We learned that this country grows lots of food and is very windy in places one wouldn't expect. We learned just how important Wisconsin actually is to the country, how deserted Wyoming is, how beautiful the amber waves of grain and purple mountains majesty really are, and that there are plenty of experiences just waiting for us to return to do. It was a great experience for both of us, and a wonderful vacation as we transitioned from seminary to ministry.  Now we have a week with family and to gear up for our multi-week internship in London.  Stay tuned for updates from that trip...