RoadTrip 2006: Wednesday

Woke up at home today. With snows blocking almost all of east California from access, (it's so rare, that we only have roughly 3-4 passes trough the mountains, all of which were snowed in.) I am unable to access the ghost town, Bodie. TO make matters worse, all the camping spots are either snowed in or require snow tires. Despite a valiant effort to access Yosimite's campgrounds, I was eventually forced to retire to Fresno. My spirit was undiminished, however, and I set off for San Luis Jaun Baptista at the first opportunity.

Mission San Luis Jaun Baptista is the fifth of the 21 missions founded in California and was founded by Father Sierra(the first founding father of the missions) himself. I visited it once as a child and I have fond memories of wandering it's halls. Since the previous missions were missing a lot of the outlying buildings, I decided it would be nice to head to a mission that I knew still had most of it's original infrastructure.

I arrived in good time, and started my tour with the various buildings and offices contained in the outlying building. Since the natives didn't have any cannon, the priests would build them right into the outlying walls, facing the inside. I was able to view an Earth-walled kitchen, some meeting halls and a few storerooms filled with old artifacts from the 17-1800s. There was also a magnificent statue of the mission's namesake, John the Baptist, in the courtyard.

Some cool memories:

* Being able to look directly at the San Adreas Faultline. The line is only a few hundred feet from the mission and moves at a rate of 4 inches every year.

* Visiting the state historic park around the mission. While the mission is devoted to the 1750s and is owned by the Catholic church, the surrounding park is devoted to what was once a major production center of Horse Carriages in California.

* Walking trough the Plaza hotel, one of the last bastions of wild West gambling and shootin'

* Watching the chickens. San Juan has chickens like some towns have cats. They're everywhere, just minding their own business.

All in all I had a very good time. I even managed to swing by Casa de Fruta again on the way back.

Side note: My MRE this time contains instant milkshake mix. No ice required. There;s definitely been some changes in the MRE food supply in the past few months.