Picture of the day....

I thought I should do something to develop a habit of posting regularly.
So we'll try this. Feel free to comment, critique, complain, etc....

This is the courtyard of the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala.
In March, 1769, a party of 219 men called the Sacred Expedition, led by Father Junipero Serra and Don Gaspar de Portola, left Baja California, Mexico, to establish the first Spanish church in California. Two groups travelled, one by land and one by sea, meeting in July, 1769, on a hillside above a wide bay. It was a difficult journey; almost half the men died, more were ill, and one ship was lost.

Portola soon took Fathers Crespi and Gomez and the strongest men and left for Monterey Bay. Father Serra and the rest selected a site - at the base of a hill, beside a river, with a native American village on a nearby hilltop.
On July 16, Father Serra celebrated the first mass beside a wooden cross. He named the mission San Diego de Alcala in honor of Saint Didacus of Alcala, the name explorer Sebastian Vizcaino gave the bay 167 years before.