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Sunday arrived and we gathered up the few necessities for a short outing, jumped into the car, and got on the road. About ten minutes later, we found ourselves parking at the site. Walking up the path toward the monument we saw a small crowd gathered in the amphitheatre. What luck! There was a group of presenters telling the tale of the battle of San Pasqual and demonstrating period (and reproduction) equipment. Naturally, we took a seat and listened to the presentation. The speaker first told the story of the known historical events, situations, and decisions leading up to the battle, then discussed the battle itself and the subsequent movement of both American and Mexican troops toward what is now Old Town San Diego. (I'll let you read and/or visit to get the story yourself.)
During the presentation he referred to the surrounding geography and monuments on the site (noting the typical omission of the Native American guide on the large bronze monument behind them), which happens to also include a small field with a few trees, boulders, and a small number of brass/bronze plaques about half a mile down the road. Around the visitor center, I was a bit surprised to find myself looking at the terrain and thinking "that's a good spot to camp without being easily spotted by the enemy", "there's a good spot to put scouts" and "the U.S. cavalry probably took the approach from the ridgeline to the south because they were hidden until they were close to the Mexican 'Californios'." I suppose you can take the man out of West Point, but you can't take West Point out of the man.
The presentation shifted to a walk-through of the equipment used by a cavalryman during the Mexican-American War. Starting with the food (::sheesh:: one should always use that term loosely when referring to military rations from any point in time... I've eaten my share from a few different eras!), he and an assistant (lower ranking, from the chevrons) showed the typical amounts carried by each soldier. The typical kinds of ammunition for a "mountain howitzer" were explained (and happen to be in the photo to the right), and all sounded pretty nasty. He and his assistant then showed the weapons the U.S. used, including the lance, breach-loading shotgun, flintlock pistol, cavalry saber, and cannon.
Everything concluded with a bang... quite literally. Ethan a.k.a. "Swag-Mag"--as he seems to have a high concentration of some bizarre magnetic substance that attracts swag--was picked out of the crowd to join the cannoneers when they fired the howitzer. His job? To yell "Fire!" once every station was finished with their loading duties. It was especially funny because he got distracted by everything going on and forgot to say fire until the team leader prompted him... three times. The ensuing concussion left a smile plastered to his face for a good while afterwards. Someone in the crowd asked the presenters to gather around the cannon, so I snuck a photo in.
Afterwards, we jumped onto the nature trail (you can see it winding up from the upper right across the hillside toward the other portion of the monument on the lower left). The web site says it is only about a mile, but after walking the trail there and back, I would have to say they must have measured wrong... or only one way. Sure, we were walking with Mini-Me, but he kept up a decent pace, even through the areas where we wished he would have slowed down to avoid a 40-foot slide into pricklypear cactus (he didn't fall, we were just worried he would).When I am on such adventures, I often find myself thinking of how "this or that" would help set the scene in a story I'd like to write or some RPG adventure I'm working on. In this case, reference photos were needed:
Oh, and what would this blog post be without a relevant link to Wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Pasqual
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