Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“They all knew.”

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Come on, man.

In my day, never was longer.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Everybody saw this coming.

Republicans in disarray!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On the Road and In Your Backyard

On the Road and In Your Backyard

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

Submit Your Photos

Good Morning All,

This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.

So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.

You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.

For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

First up, pictures from valued commenter BroD (note from Alain: should’ve run Monday!).

I tend to hunker down at home on holidays so here’s a few from the dead oak out back.

Taken on 2017-08-28

Baltimore

If this doesn’t make you imagine captions, you’re a robot.

These flying dinosaurs, in their varied carriages, are just…so…damned….cool! Thank you so much for this.

Today, pictures from valued commenter ?BillinGlendaleCA.

The Spanish established a chain of 21 missions in California in the late 18th and early 19th century, stretching from San Diego to Sonoma. The mission properties were rather wealthy and included industrial operations, by some accounts owning 1/6 of Alta California. They were secularized after Mexican independence and fell into various states of disrepair. Many have been restored to their original(but smaller) state. They are now owned by the Catholic Church and are both museums and active churches.

Mission San Juan Capistrano

I visited Mission San Juan Capistrano in the late 60’s as a child and wanted to revisit it; being that I didn’t want to fight traffic driving down to southern Orange County, I took AmTrak from Union Station to San Juan Capistrano. Mission San Juan Capistrano was the 7th mission established in 1776. It contains “Serra Chapel”, the only know building still standing that FatherSt. Junipero Serra celebrated mass and is the oldest building in the State of California. The mission also contains the ruins of “The Great Stone Church” that was built in the early 1800’s and was promptly destroyed in the 1812 7.5 magnitude San Juan Capistrano earthquake during morning mass with a loss of 42 lives. A basilica that was based upon the design of “The Great Stone Church” was built next to the mission in the 1980’s.

Fountain with “The Great Stone Church” in the background.

Taken on 2016-12-02

San Juan Capistrano, CA

This is right at the entrance to the mission after you pass though the gift shop and they take your cash. Anyway, it’s a nice looking fountain.

Ruins of “The Great Stone Church”

Taken on 2016-12-02

San Juan Capistrano, CA

The characteristic that separates “The Great Stone Church” from other mission buildings(both at Mission San Juan Capistrano and all the other missions) is in it’s name. It was built using stone as opposed to adobe bricks. This is the view from what would have been the church doors with the bell tower to the right

“The Great Stone Church” and the four-bell campanario in infrared.

Taken on 2016-12-02

San Juan Capistrano, CA

At the right of the picture is the ruins of “The Great Stone Church” with the 4 bell campanario that was constructed after the stone church’s demise. On the left is the back of “Serra’s Chapel”. Behind the capanario is the sacred garden.

Serra’s Chapel(with fisheye!)

Taken on 2016-12-02

San Juan Capistrano, CA

As noted in the general description, this is the oldest structure in California and the only place still standing that Saint Serra celebrated mass.

Mission Courtyard(in fisheye!)

Taken on 2016-12-02

San Juan Capistrano, CA

This is the main mission courtyard with Serra’s chapel at the right of the picture.

Mission Courtyard(in infrared)

Taken on 2016-12-02

San Juan Capistrano, CA

This is the same as the view as above, but a narrower field of view and in infrared.

The Mission Basilica(with fisheye!)

Taken on 2016-12-02

San Juan Capistrano, CA

This is the interior of the basilica that was built in 1980’s. Comparing this to the pictures of “The Great Stone Church”, you can see the resemblance.

 

Thank you so much ?BillinGlendaleCA, do send us more when you can.

 

Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.

 

One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    It was appropriate that the Mission San Gabriel set that ran on Monday, since it was September 4th. On September 4, 1781 a band of 44 settlers left Mission San Gabriel for the Tongva village of Yangna and founded the City of Los Angeles.

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    This is my stomping grounds and Saint Serra isn’t so universally beloved by all. He was exceptionally cruel to his forceably-converted native parishioners and there was quite a bit of criticism of the spendiness of the multi-decade building project when there were and are quite a few extremely poor local parishioners and people passing through on their way to pick crops that could have used ministering to in other ways. Also, too the church built a swanky private high school north of the mission whose football field was allegedly put in over a sacred native burial ground that predated the Spaniards, over many protests. That said, the old part of the mission is stunning in its survival in the face of all the developers who wanted to tear it down over the years.

  6. 6.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mary G:

    quite a bit of criticism of the spendiness of the multi-decade building project when there were and are quite a few extremely poor local parishioners and people passing through on their way to pick crops that could have used ministering to in other ways.

    I’ve heard the same criticism from Catholics in the past 20 years, ever visit the “Rog* Mahal”(The Cathedral of Our Lady of The Angels) in downtown LA?

    *Rog refers to the former archbishop of the Los Angeles archdioceses, Roger Mahoney.

  17. 17.

    Mary G

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Never been inside, but drove by the Roj Mahal under construction millions of times while I was working and living up there and picking up my mom at Union Station when she took the Amtrak up to visit. She never failed to shake a fist at it, convinced that he built it at least partly with money obtained by hushing up child molestation.

  18. 18.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mary G:

    She never failed to shake a fist at it, convinced that he built it at least partly with money obtained by hushing up child molestation.

    She was probably right. I’d not been inside either until late last year, it doesn’t have much charm and it kind of has a cold feel to it.

  20. 20.

    MomSense

    The photo of the birds on the dead oak tree looks like it could be a back of the album photo.

    I’m loving these mission photos, Bill.

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    That woodpecker is right to be worried. Mockingbirds don’t like to have their high-points challenged.

    Great shots.

    Have a good day, everyone. Keep an eye on Irma. :-( And fight for DACA!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  23. 23.

    meander

    I started a comment about how this mission was used in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” but then realized that I had confused San Juan Capistrano with San Juan Batista. In the interest of keeping with the recent California Mission theme, here it is:

    The Mission at San Juan Batista (San Benito County, 30 miles south of San Jose) is a key location in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece “Vertigo.” The story needed a tall tower, but there is no tower at the mission, so Hitchcock’s team used matte photography to add the tower to the mission for some location shots (the CGI of the time) and built a set on a sound stage for the tower interiors. The stables across of the lawn from the chapel are also critical to the story, and I’m sure that most of the stable interiors were shot on a sound stage. The interior of the chapel gets a few seconds of screen time.

    San Juan Batista is a nice stop on a drive if you are traveling on Highway 101 south of San Jose. It’s a few miles off of the highway and is a quiet place to look at a slice of California history.

  24. 24.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    A bit of sad history that I learned at the Autry: while the missions were pretty destructive to the California Native Americans’ culture and spread some nasty diseases, they mostly survived. The event that decimated and nearly wiped them out was the California Gold Rush, which brought waves of miners who started a genocide. So in some ways, the missions get a deliberately bad rap from people trying to claim it was the nasty Spaniards who killed off California’s Native Americans when it was actually American settlers who were primarily responsible.

  26. 26.

    No One You Know

    Heartsick today, and in tears. Starting to feel like we are all at the mercy of the stupidest people among us. My Columbia Gorge photo trip, delayed because of the heat, is off totally because a fucking teenaged boy decided it would be funny to throw firecrackers. Eagle Creek is destroyed.

    Malheur trip was cancelled due to fucking grown men who decided it was important to pretend to cosplay as revolutionaries. And they get away with it.

    The air here feels bad and tastes bad. But the moon was peach-colored and the sunsets are as fabulous as they are poisonous.

    #MAGA

  28. 28.

    WaterGirl

    Heartsick and in tears, that was me yesterday, thinking about the Dreamers. It’s hard to watch. In the meantime, I find that the photos here – and in Betty’s and TaMara’s posts – help keep me from plummeting into the depths. We need beauty and joy to keep us going so we can fight them at every step.

  29. 29.

    J R in WV

    Raven,

    I’m so jealous of your ability to pluck a family photo from your vast archives that’s totally appropriate for anything that come up.

    We had stacks of photos, but can only ID a handful of the people or places. o well.

  30. 30.

    opiejeanne

    @J R in WV: I sat with my mother for half an hour at a time identifying people in her family photos, when she had that much clarity. She had Alzheimers so it was a slow process.
    I was also a member of a family forum in the late 90s to 2009 that shared photos and was lucky enough to have several very old people who were still very sharp. They told me stories about their grandparents during and after the civil war. One told me about my 13 yo great grandmother walking from North Carolina to Missouri with her family and that his grandfather had walked with her after the Civil War. Her mother “divorced” their father, hitched up a wagon and followed her parents to their farm in the Ozarks. They identified a lot of the people in a couple of group photos taken in Montana about 1927.

    Party in Montana

  31. 31.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @No One You Know:

    My Columbia Gorge photo trip, delayed because of the heat, is off totally because a fucking teenaged boy decided it would be funny to throw firecrackers.

    The kid’s up in Seattle for her vacation and was planning a day trip to see the Columbia Gorge, it’s off for her as well. She put up a pic from the Space Needle, yuck.

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