Sixty minutes at a high desert breakfast

More focus aerobics (the monthly ballyhoo), plus great nonfiction, a short film from Australia, and the best reads from the week online

Vintage postcard, Jacumba Hot Springs Resort

I visited the high desert above San Diego last week for an upcoming Travel + Leisure story. Up Old Highway 80, about an hour into the mountains, there’s an old mineral springs resort that was popular with Hollywood during Prohibition, that recently got renovated, breathing new life into a very small town.

Very small meaning no stoplights, one market, and less than 500 residents (including a UFO repairman).

All of it is surrounded by piles of rock and long flats of scrub brush. Anytime you look south, there’s Mexican hills. Maybe three blocks away, there’s the rusty-red border wall, patrolled by Border Agents in white SUVs.

But there’s also a small community center, and they offer cheap breakfasts for locals on Sunday mornings, and what else did I have to do?