I woke up this morning to the cacophony of dozens of birds
of all different kinds in the trees over my tent. This was followed by a muted thumping of many
deer wandering through the campsite. As
we would later come to learn, the deer at San Antonio reservoir are quite used
to people and have become trained by repeatedly bad visitors to being hand-fed. It was almost comical that when we started
rustling paper plates and other breakfast items to set the table, over a dozen
deer came running – literally – towards our breakfast table. There were a few in particular who were adept
beggars. I have never seen a deer beg
for scraps before! We of course didn’t give them anything, but they hung around
until they were sure they wouldn’t get anything from us, and we got a lot of
pictures. The whole time we were eating,
they slowly walked in circles around our table, so there were deer on all sides
throughout the meal. When we’d cleared
the table, the biggest beggar walked right up and licked the table cloth just
in case we’d dropped some crumbs.
Since the campground we were supposed to bike out from was closed and we couldn’t access that trail, we drove to where the day’s route picked up at the Big Sandy wildlife area. The route from there was a pretty easy stretch into San Miguel and then into Paso Robles.
Mission San Miguel, our first stop of the day, is the most
intact of the missions we’ve seen so far: though other missions have appeared
to be fully restored, those had to be rebuilt after the original was destroyed
from natural disaster or neglect.
Mission San Miguel, though, has essentially stayed the same since it was
built. The structures suffered some damage
in a recent quake, but nothing fell over or was fully destroyed like so many
other missions, and that structural damage has since been repaired.
Also, this mission is still being used by the Franciscans as
a residential training center for new priests.
While this gives it the feel of a “real” mission (you don’t have to
imagine what it would have been like when it was used, since it still is!), it
also means that visitors can’t walk around the whole thing, since a lot of it
is just for the resident Franciscans. But
those parts in which you can walk around in are a good overall view of the
mission complex, and the chapel interior is especially nice with its colorful
walls.
After the mission, we walked over to the historical site
next door, the Rios Caledonia Adobe.
This used to be a hotel, saloon, stagecoach stop, gas station, home, and
more during its long history. You could
walk through both upstairs and downstairs, and they had the rooms set up with
nice displays to show how they would have looked when the Rios family was
living there, and also had a saloon and a Wells Fargo stage stop office
display. The old stage road is still
visible along the side of the building.
Lunch was at a real hole-in-the-wall country diner called
The Country Diner. It was tiny, with a U-shaped counted that the
waitress/owner/cook could walk down the middle of to serve all the
customers. The food was good,
old-fashioned, no-nonsense. Just as she
claimed when we were ordering, she doesn’t make frou-frou food. Lunch was sandwiches, salad, potato salad, a chocolate
malt, and a slice of apple pie, all homemade.
We biked through the wine country around Paso Robles to get
to the hotel, the Adelaide Inn. The ride
was uneventful, and the inn is quite pleasant.
Plus the internet connection here is great, so I am able to (finally!)
back up my trip photos… I have been so worried they would get lost or destroyed
by some tech mishap!
Tomorrow noon will mark our half-way point by time. As of today we are half way through the guide
book, and have entered the southern half of the state (at least by AAA
standards). We have now seen more than
half of the missions!
Today’s route (actual biked route began at Big Sandy
wildlife area): http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2966928
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