Name:
Location: Fresno, California, United States

I'm a Christian Swordfighter and Renfaire actor living in California. I'm just trying to make my place in this world and achieve God's purpose in my life.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Roadtrip 2006: monday

(Transcribed)

As previously mentioned, there was a change in my vacation plans. No need for details, but Gettysburg became way too expensive. (There is'nt a hostel around for like 30 miles!) Having gone trough so much trouble to get the days off. I instead plaaned a last-minute roadtrip around California. Todays adventure takes me to San Jose, famous for beach, sun, and the Real El Comino Road. After some minor adventures with the traffic (I get lost easily), I managed to find the mission San Jose. FOr those unfamiliar which California heritage, this state was ruled by the spanish government for almost half a century. While few settlers ever came so far north, a determined band of soldiers and friars made their way to Calfifornia's coast to build Missions. These missons were both church and defensive fort, the center of all trade and buiseness and really an entire town packed into walls made of Adobe bricks. Concerened with conversion of the Native Americians to Christ, the faithful priests and nuns of the catholic orders maintanined these buildings trough war, change of goverments, disease and famine. Roughly 21 of these mission were built, all along a trade route called the El Camino road.

Mission San Jose was'nt as big as I hoped, almost all of the orginal property was lost during Mexico's de-secularzation. During that time a succession of goveners had given away most of the mission's lands to thier friends and all the orginal walls are gone. The church itself still stands though, as well as some of the buildings. I managed to wander trough the mesuem, which was full of neat mission and indian artifacts. My Definte favorite was an inqueinious water purifier made from Pumice rock. As water trickled down trhrough the minute holes in the pumice, it would clean the water and let it drip into a smaller bowl below it. There was also some pretty neat indian and spanish settler artifacts.

The Mission was smaller than I had hoped, so I ambled 13 miles south the Mission Santa CLara. The misson here had been convereted into university campus and had lost everything but the main church and the facade. I snapped a few picutres and toured the church, but also took a peek at the local telescopes, which were huge.

All in all today has been rather successfull, altough I did run trough things a bit quicker than expected. I look foward eagerly to tuesday, where I'll be ambling over to gold country and California's proudest town of SOnora.

Side note: My MRE tonight contain a bag of M&Ms, complete with offical logo and everything. Seriously.

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