April 5, 2014: San Juan Capistrano with Alex

All images copyrighted Casondra Sobieralski.  Please contact for use permissions: cmsobieralski@hotmail.com


 Alex is a high school friend who also shows up in a February blog post.

At San Juan Capistrano Mission, I missed Kevin's dad, Russ, so badly I got all sniffly.  (He passed in June, 2013.)  Russ led us on a tour of 5 missions together in one day several years ago, Soledad, San Miguel, San Antonio, San Juan Batista and Soledad.  I've also been to the missions of Carmel-by-the-Sea, San Francisco, and Sonoma.  Remarkably, I have never been to San Rafael Mission in Marin, even though I pass it every couple weeks.

In any case, Kevin's dad was very supportive of my interest in the missions, and bought me some great books about them that I treasure. 

He was also a photographer, so hopefully these photos would do him proud!

One beef I have about the missions, as beautiful as they are and as historically rich as they are:  The attached museums and the bookstores completely and intentionally gloss over / ignore / wipe out the Native American perspective of what happened.  The Spanish Catholic church launched a wholesale crusade against them. They knocked down the equal status of the women, enslaved the men, made people convert or they killed them.   Tons o' genocide.  And all the attention the missions pay to this is to have cemeteries full of Ohlone with plaques.  I almost wretched when I saw a statue at San Juan Capistrano of a Native American man in humble supplication at the foot of a friar.  REEEEEAAAAALLY?   Holy propaganda.

But aside from that little historical oversight, the missions are artistically amazing, each a day's horse journey from the next (about 30 miles).  There are 21 Spanish missions from San Diego to Sonoma. 

Below is a mix of pretty tourist photos and "data" photos for the cultural heritage and architecture aficionados in my circle. 

I captured this because it was the biggest chard I ever did see!  

Pretty much up to my thighs!

March 30, 2014: Tennessee Valley (Marin Headlands) with Juniper, his sons and his cousin

All images copyrighted Casondra Sobieralski.  Please contact for use permissions: cmsobieralski@hotmail.com



Juniper is a dear friend of mine from the Santa Fe Striders, and the FASTEST RUNNER I ever did see!  :0  :)

He was in the Bay Area college shopping with his kids.  I got to run with him on a Thursday morning, then hike with the whole crew that Saturday afternoon. 

I kept up with him on our Thursday run, even though he had just come from 7000 feet down to sea level.  But he must have been very sleepy or just taking it easy.  Heh heh heh.

Also to note with this set-- some of the photos of the waves represent my first experiments with my 55-250mm lens.  That was a fun perceptual tweak; it felt like I was well INTO the water when I was standing on the beach.  So when waves rolled in, my instinct was to dart from them-- ha ha!   It reminds me of early film history when ran from the theater when the image of the train roared right at them.