Our Mission for today: Mission San Jose

After a week of camp chores and hanging around the trailer we decided that we should do a little minor exploring and sightseeing today.

The entrance to Mission San Jose

On a couple of our recent runs out of the park we noticed Mission San Jose, a  National Park site, just about a mile from our RV park. From Roosevelt Avenue we could only see a high stone wall, but decided that we should stop by and check it out.

So after lunch (and Joan’s soap opera) we headed to Mission San Jose. Arriving about 2:15 p.m. we got there in time to see an interesting documentary film on the several missions along the San Antonio River and how they were interconnected.

As a Californian, I am very familiar with the Spanish missions in that State. Those were roughly placed a day’s ride from each other to facilitate travel in the early days of California. Not so in Texas. The five missions in the San Antonio area were placed in close proximity along the river for protection of the native people who sought protection from hostile Apaches from the Spanish.

The Rose Window, part of the original mission.

After the movie there was an announcement for a one-hour tour by a park ranger. That sounded pretty good to us, so we formed up outside the Visitor Center and ended up the only ones on the tour. Our guide, Park Ranger Tatum, happily agreed to give us a personalized tour of the mission as long as we agreed to ask lots of questions so she wouldn’t feel ridiculous giving her speech to just two people.

Over 100 years the former mission had fallen into disrepair and the former occupants, the Native Americans, stripped much of the former masonry and stones for use in building houses near the site. In the 1930s, workers hired by the government during the Depression rebuilt the mission based on old paintings and drawings. Only about 30 percent of the San Jose site is the original construction.

Many of the foundations were still in place so workers and designers knew pretty much where the old walls and rooms were, Tatum told us.

Nearby Mission Concepcion, which we plan to visit next week, was not stripped and is about 90 percent of it is original construction.

While the walls and rooms around the mission are part of the National Park Service, the church building is the property of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Antonio and is still an active church. Tatum said there are five Sunday masses and all are completely packed each week.

The church is currently making renovations and improvements to the interior and exterior of the church and the outside original statuary is beautiful. One of the current fixes is a statue St. Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary. A decade ago a young boy not being watched closely enough by his parents climbed up on the statue and ended up getting trapped which resulted in masonry arm of Joachim being broken.

Recently the broken arm was located in a diocesan storage area and an artist was working on it today to reattach and fasten the arm to the statue.

Inside the church some amazing gold leaf and other work has been done to the altar to enhance the color of the interior.

The cactus is quite hardy.

The site has a working grist mill which we enjoyed watch grind some flour.  Tatum turned us loose to tour some of the out buildings, but we dropped by the visitor’s center to put in a good comment card on our ranger.

Back at the trailer, Joan put together her homemade cheese ball and crackers and we took that to the 5 p.m. Happy Hour at the park recreation hall.

The ladies sit at one table and the men sit at another table and I met a number of nice men, mostly from Canada. One of the men was from the Toronto area and with all of our travels through Ontario and a mutual interest in hockey the hour went quickly.

Most of these folks have been coming to this park for a dozen or more years, which makes Joan and I the newcomers.

After happy hour we turned into our trailer for a quiet night in front of the television. To see more photos of today’s adventure, simply scroll down a little for some more photos. On tap tomorrow: San Antonio Rampage hockey!