My Missions Trip, part three

Mission to the Missions

 

 

My third stop, and my final stop, was Mission San Juan. I had originally planned to head down to Mission Espada afterwards, but I was worried about getting back to my car by five o'clock, and decided to skip the last mission for this trip. The church at Mission Espada is currently closed and under renovations, so I decided that checking out the grounds could wait.

 

Mission San Juan is much smaller than the previous two missions.

 

 

 

This beautiful cactus and cross centerpiece greets visitors at the entrance to the grounds. The Mission itself is mostly wide open space, a handful of buildings spread along the edges of a rectangular field.

 

 

The church almost seems like something from a movie set, a building façade rather than an actual active church. But it is active, like the other missions. It's a small narrow building, but even so you can see the care that went into the architecture. 

 

Perhaps the most striking part of Mission San Juan to me was the unfinished church, directly opposite the active one. These ruins are of a church partially built and then abandoned. The grounds of the church in progress then became the graveyard of the Indian residents of the Mission. In respect of the dead, the grounds are off limits.

 

Mission San Juan was the quickest stop on my day out. Aside from walking the square and giving a moment of silence aside the unfinished church/graveyard, I didn't spend much time there. There are, however, nature trails looping the Mission. Due to my time concerns, I didn't explore them, but I fully encourage anyone checking out the area to investigate the trails and let me know how they were.

 



My Missions Trip, Part two

Mission to the Missions



 

The second mission on my route was Mission San Jose. It is the largest of the four missions that make up the state park, and home of the biggest visitors center, which includes a small museum and gift store. This mission has a bigger volunteer staff than Concepcion, and offers a 45 minute guided tour roughly every hour.

Unlike Mission Concepcion, the wall surrounding the compound is still very much in tact.
 

 

The residences for the natives were built into the wall, with a door every couple of feet. The rounded tower on the corner was a store room.

 

 

Only a few of the doors were actually open, allowing visitors a glimpse into what it might have looked like to someone living there, with even a little furnishing in one of the rooms. My favorite aspects of history have always been daily life, and it was very cool to walk through these rooms and imagine the people that lived there once upon a time.

 

 

Following the path across the open field inside the walls lead me to the church, a stunning building. I obviously wasn't the only one who thought so, since a girl was in the middle of her senior photos in front of the worn stone building.

 

 

There were some renovations taking place, so a couple of the rooms of the convento were closed off, but it had no effect on the experience, since it was still open enough to explore the whole area.

 

 

The convento, living quarters of the missionaries. The remains here are actually remnants of a major reconstruction undertaken in 1861 by Benedictine monks, which they never finished.

 

This was probably my favorite aspect of Mission San Jose. This was a room in the convento, closed off to the public and overgrown with greenery. It really gave me a Secret Garden kind of vibe, and I really wished that I could grab a picnic blanket and just relax in the middle of it for the rest of the day.

 

 

From the convento, I went to the church itself. It was another beautiful example of a church, bigger than Mission Concepcion, and much more colorful. But then, Mission San Jose doesn't get to boast about being the oldest unrestored stone church in America. Those original frescos are hard-pressed to retain all of their color.

 

 

Personally, though, I much preferred wandering the grounds outside than remaining indoors.

 

 

This stairway is pretty darn cool. It was carved from a single log, and put together without any nails or pegs. I only wish I'd been able to climb it, although it does look pretty steep and narrow, so I can understand keeping it off limits to tourists. 

 

This is the Rose Window, one of San Jose's big focus points. It's a beautiful example of baroque architecture, but no one knows why it's called the Rose Window, since the carvings are of pomegranates, and no one knows who actually carved it. It's a local source of legend and mystery, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

 

And that was my visit to Mission San Jose. I didn't stick around to see the award winning video shown in the visitor's center, as I wanted to make sure that I had time to get to the next two missions and back to Concepcion before 5 (I didn't want to be parked there past closing, I wasn't sure if they'd care or not that my car was still there...)

However, I did check out their museum. It's a little two room set up that explains the missions, the natives, and it's pretty cool. They have a copy of the manuals that missionaries were given to instruct them on how to run a mission. They have some cool examples of pottery and the products of daily life of the natives living in the missions, and the whole thing gives visitors an idea of what all the missions used to be like, and their purpose in the world of 1700s America.