San Antonio Missions

Today I finally took a few hours to visit the remaining four San Antonio Missions that I missed when we visited the Alamo.  The first stop was the main visitor's center for the San Antonio Missions National Historic Sites at Mission San Jose.

San Jose was the first mission on my trip, though it was situated in between the other missions on the map with Mission Concepcion to the north and Missions San Juan and Espada to the south.  My favorite part of the entire tour was the flour mill at Mission San Jose.  There the San Antonio River is channeled to the oldest active grain mill in Texas where the water is held in a 9-foot deep reservoir before it is allowed to power the mill stone in an outlying building.  Inside, the volunteer working at the site was actually milling actual grain into actual flour!  It was basically awesome.

The next stop was Mission San Juan, on the south end of the Mission Trail.  This mission was under renovations and it was difficult to get a decent picture with the lighting and the construction equipment in the way but I think this one turned out OK.  What is interesting about the 200+ year old missions is that they all have an active parish with regular services.  The parsonage for Mission San Juan is actually just to the right of this picture and is still serving as a private residence.  Cool.

 

Between Mission San Juan and the next stop was a slight detour to visit the Espada Aqueduct.  It's pretty amazing what cultures were able to figure out so many years ago to solve problems like irrigation and diversion.  There are very few places in the U.S. to see this technology functioning as it did then.

Here is the "Where's Waldo" moment for you... See if you can find Mission Espada...  These are mesquite trees and they are pretty amazing.  If you look closely you can see the Mission peeking through the branches.

The last stop on the trail was Mission Concepcion, a few miles north from where I began the journey.  Concepcion had amazing paintings that had been preserved on the walls inside several of the rooms.  I did not take any interior pictures out of respect for the active parishes that these buildings represent.  I also did not get any pictures today of Mission San Antonio de Valero (The Alamo) but I did drive by just so I could say that I saw all of the five San Antonio Missions in the same afternoon. And what a beautiful afternoon it was!