Mission San Antonio de Padua

Last Sunday I went to Mission San Antonio de Padua. This is a really cool mission! It is on the Hunter-Liggett military reservation near King City. Since it is a military base you have to show ID and they check your car registration & insurance before they let you in. Apparently I didn't look dangerous because I had no problem getting in.

This was the 3rd mission established in the 21-mission chain in California. As an aside, this was the 16th mission I've visited. I only have 5 left. Jill's been to all of them. Back to the mission story. It was established by Padre Serra himself on July 14, 1771. It was originally established in a different location but moved to the present site in 1773. The mission was named for Saint Anthony who is the patron saint of the poor and is called upon to help find lost items.

There are a number of neat things about this mission. The thing I like best is that it is easy to imagine how it might have been when the mission was established. Many of the missions today are in the middle of cities. San Antonio is isolated and you don't see "civilization" so you get a better sense of what mission life was like. Looking around you see mountains and miles of empty land. I was expecting to see Franciscans and Indians come walking up!

It also has a wine cellar. You walk down steep, narrow steps and you can see where the wine vats were kept. You can then walk up very steep steps and peer down - not easy if you're short - into where the grapes were crushed and dripped down into the vats. I really liked this part.

They also have a nice collection of Indian baskets. The mission person (I don't know what her title was), said they were donated in the early 1900's by a local ranchers wife who had been collecting them. The collection is worth quite a bit and contains some nice baskets.

You can walk around outside and see the ruins of a cemetery, the water mill, where the soldiers barracks were, the mill race and more.

It is a somewhat long trip from the Bay Area - about 3 hrs - but definitely worth it. Well, at least if you are interested in missions it is! I hope you all like the pictures. I took about 200 pictures. I didn't realize how many I'd taken until I put them on the computer. The funny thing is I felt like I missed a lot of stuff that I would have liked to take pictures of!