A Mission to See Missions

Tuesday, April 19th – San Antonio to Seminole Canyon State Park, Del Rio, Texas – Day 68 

 The morning featured a big breakfast of eggs and potato pancakes. It’s my standard breakfast meal when we want something special. The farm eggs were big and tasty. While I was making breakfast the kids went to check beside a small shed where a hen was nesting and came back with an egg. The biggest challenge was trying to keep the kids away from the house because they badly wanted to see the baby chicks again. Threats were used and they slowly came back to the trailer. We packed up the trailer. Before we left, we needed to purchase the ground beef, we knocked on the door. The kids were able to see the chicks again but one of them had died. We were mortified that the kids had done damage when holding them the day before. We were assured that they had all been alive in the morning. We received our frozen ground beef and off we went. 

 It was a good thing that we didn’t visit San Antonio the day before. The Missions of San Antonio were five different properties. We obviously didn’t do enough research; we were only aware of the Missions because we saw a junior ranger’s badge in a display. We wouldn’t have been able to do much of anything the day before. We started with the most remote mission, Mission Espada, founded in 1731. It was mostly a bunch of ruined walls around a beautiful little church. Being the most remote, the mission had been under threat from roaming bands of Native Americans. Gen spent ages in the gift shop. I don’t want to spoil anything, but Brian McDonough will love his gift. A sizable amount was spent on souvenirs for people. We received our junior ranger booklets and stamped our national park passports and on we went. 

 The next mission, Mission San Juan, was a larger property with more buildings intact. They had a lovely white church, which I realize now I did not go in to. We were distracted by a group of tables set up by Rangers featuring an educational feature on bats. This was an additional booklet that the kids worked through and earned a special Urban Junior Ranger badge. Aisling and Charlotte have a new appreciation for bats and really want to see some. We had a quick lunch under looming threat of rain and then off we went. 

 The next mission was the biggest of them all, Mission San Jose, and was very impressive. A huge central field surrounded by houses within the 15-foot-high walls and focused on a large and intricately designed church. At this point it was raining but we donned our raincoats and pressed on. We went around the church and visited several educational displays they had. The architecture was beautiful. Aware of a time crunch, we needed to visit the Alamo and one other Mission and had an hour, we were sworn in at the visitor’s centre and pushed on.

 We drove by the Mission Concepcion and took a brief glimpse of the Moorish inspired church. We were slowly driving into the centre of San Antonio. We ran into some road work around the Alamo and it took us a while to find a free parking lot (it’s still free if you don’t pay the $20 they wanted for 30 minutes of parking). We entered the Alamo. I didn’t really know much about the Alamo except the phrase “Remember the Alamo”; the Texian motto which helped remember the soldiers who were all killed. This battle and slaughter, pushed the Tejanos (Indigenous Texians) and Settlers to join the army, reinforce the Texas Republic and ultimately seek the protection of the United States. The Texian side of this particular war is that Mexico treated the Mexican state of Tejas poorly and they wanted out; the Mexican side is they wanted to reassert Tejas ties to Mexico and crack down on the slave owning settlers, slavery being illegal in Mexico. We need to see the movie. 

 By the time we got there, we had thirty minutes before it closed. We wandered through the Church, part of the original Spanish Mission to learn how it is falling apart and how it was transformed into a military base over the years. The grounds were pretty, so we wandered around, saw statues and took some pictures. Before we left, we caught a glimpse of the river walk in San Antonio. It looked gorgeous and well worth a trip back just to walk along and enjoy the restaurants. Unfortunately, the rain and children stopped us from taking a walk this time around. 

Back to the car. We were heading to Seminole Canyon State Park, a three-hour drive. We needed something to eat and discovered that Whataburger was a Texian burger chain. We stopped in for a meal. It was good. We all got milk shakes which was a treat. 

The drive was dark, we arrived late to a cactus surrounded, windy campsite with a great view of the stars.