We spent Sunday at Sea World. The morning passed fairly comfortably, but the wind died in the afternoon, and even though it only reached 100, the afternoon was pretty hot.
We enjoyed the shows -- especially the clown act at Azul, and of course, Shamu. At one point in the afternoon, we returned to the car, where we'd left a cooler full of drinks and fruit. We sat in the car with the air
conditioner running and recovered, which enabled us to spend pretty much an entire day at the park.
Not much more to say about the park. If you've never been, you should go and have a good time.
Monday marked our return to the quest for Texas history and stamps for our passport.
Beginning in 1718 the Spanish established five missions along the San Antonio river to evangelize the native population. According to a film the National Park Service shows at the main mission, San Jose, their work would fuse two cultures, resulting in a new culture.
Mission San Jose is the oldest and largest of the missions. The walls were fortified to protect against attacks, so you'll see gun turrets and gunports for defense. The outer wall are also where the Indian barracks were located. Each family had two rooms, one with a fireplace.
In the courtyard each barracks was fronted by a water well and community ovens, one for every three or four families. In a lot of ways it reminded us of an apartment complex with community barbecue pits.
The worship area is being restored so we couldn't go inside, but a functioning congregation still meets in the building, as is true of the three other missions open to the public.
The mission houses a large granary and a grist mill. The mill was used to grind wheat and was powered by water diverted from the river. After powering the mill, the water returns to acequias, ditches essentially, that carry it to the fields for irrigation
We stop back in at the main office and ask how to get to the next mission, and the park ranger ac
ts like we're idiots. We have a brochure with a map of locations that also has a bunch of colored lines with no legend that explains what they are. Turns out the dotted line is the one you're supposed to follow. Then she tells us to just follow the brown signs.
Big mistake.
We take off, following the brown signs as instructed and soon come to a turn off to go to the southernmost mission, Espada. My plan is to go to Mission San Juan, then go back to Espada and finish at Mission Conception, the turn-off for which we passed on our way to Mission San Jose.
The only problem is that we became so focused on following the brown signs, we're not paying real close attention to what they say. It's remarkable how similar San Juan and San Jose are. In case that line didn't tip you off, we wound up back where we started. Grr.
We start off following the signs again, only this time we take the turn off to Espada. Espada is the least well preserved of the missions, but the grounds surrounding the chapel are nicely maintained by the friars who run the parish, with some gorgeous flowers. Espada is one of the two missions near the labores, or farms that provided the grain.
We follow the brown signs again, paying close attention to their content and arrive safely at Mission San Juan. The park service provides a hiking trail at this mission to take you to the river, more like a small stream at this point. When you return to the mission, you face what was the main entrance.
This mission is also small compared with Mission San Jose but is better restored or was maintained better than Espada.
Next on our tour was Mission Concepcion, closer to downtown than the other missions. We
follow the brown signs again, and everything seems to be going swimmingly until one of the signs directs us to go a particular direction, and then we run out of brown signs. Soon we find ourselves on the edge of downtown, having completely missed Concepcion.
Using the park map, we start to head back to San Jose and wind up right next to Concepcion. Not too bad.
The church and convent sections of Concepcion are the best preserved of any of the buildings, with some of the original stucco still in existence. You become accustomed to seeing these buildings without the covering they had, in which frescoes had been painted.
If you've ever seen buildings in Mexico with bright, vivid external colors and patterns painted on them, then you have an idea of how these buildings probably looked long ago, not the drab, brown and gray stone structures you see now.
One of the park rangers is talking to a couple as I walk by, but he grabs my arm and tells me how to take a shot of the mission that he thinks it particularly striking. I go line up the way he's instructed and
wind up agreeing that it's a nice shot. You can see sky in all the window of the towers.
After our visit to Concepcion, we eat lunch and head for Gonzales. We are determined to obtain the passport stamp we missed the last time we were there. We roll into town and find the chamber of commerce, located in the old jail, which is also a tourist attraction.
After obtaining the stamp, we walk through the jail building, looking at the cells, which no one in his right mind would want to spend any time in, and viewing the reconstructed gallows. You can walk up on the gallows platform if you want, and I suppose you could even stick your head in the noose, but that seems a bit too creepy for me, and we skip that highlight.
Afterward, we jump in the cube and head for home, sweet home. Someday soon we'll plan a visit to the final sites on the 175th anniversary tour: San Felipe de Austin and the San Jacinto battleground.
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