Day 3: Oakland to Saratoga

A long ride, but not a very exciting one.  Most of the day was through silicon valley and the south bay: the sights of box stores, the sounds of traffic, the smells of... asphalt, garbage, exhaust at times; freshly fallen leaves and cut grass at others.
We visited two missions today.  Mission San Jose (located in Fremont, not San Jose) is run by a church, but is mostly used as a museum.  It had a great collection of exhibits.  We spent more time wandering through the exhibits here than we have at all the other missions thus far combined.

Mission Santa Clara was quite different.  It is an active church on a university campus.  It has been a part of an educational campus almost since the end of the Mission era, and was pretty well preserved until the whole thing burnt down in the early 1900s in an electrical fire.  The current mission is beautiful, though, and very large (not the largest in the mission chain, but definitely bigger than what we've seen so far).  The inside is very ornate.  Unlike other active mission churches we've been to - which have also had a newer church built next door - this one is the primary chapel and so there were actually people worshiping inside, and it really felt like a religious sanctuary.

The highlight of the day was the Winchester Mystery House.  When I first heard about it, I thought it sounded kind of hokey, but it's actually really interesting and authentic.  The house is essentially just as Sara Winchester had built it.  It is a very strange place, to say the least.  I had read quite a bit about it before visiting, and it was still fascinating to walk through and learn more about.  The admission is kind of high, but it was worth every penny.
Dinner was at a little Italian restaurant in Saratoga with excellent lasagna.  Saratoga is a cute little town, very touristy and upscale.
The campground was interesting, to put it nicely.  It was a privately owned campground, so it had more amenities than most state parks do, like laundry facilities.  But, the campsites were tiny, the showers were expensive, and the bathrooms kind of far from the tent area (but right next to the RV area).  The management could certainly be better: the staff has been friendly, but extremely difficult to get hold of even during normal business hours.


Today's route: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2842776