Day 8 - San Antonio to Del Rio

Off from the hotel bright and early today, heading for the Mission Trail.  Picked up the trail start quickly enough, but sometimes the directions and markers weren't what one might expect.  In any case, we reached the first mission, Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion (aka Concepcion), with a rather imposing church; most of the rest of the original grounds have not been preserved.  We arrived well before the site opened, so we couldn't go inside.  Here's a couple of views:

Next stop was the best preserved site, as well as the park headquarters.  This one is known as San Jose, and is also an active church (as are all the missions except the Alamo).  The outer wall is lined with quarters for the mission's Indians, and the corner bastions are still there. The church itself is also impressive:

The cloisters (quarters for monks and other religious staff) have not been restored, but are nevertheless impressive, as well:

As I said, this is an active church.  Parishioners, busy cleaning the Sacristy floor, said it was OK to take pictures in the sanctuary:

Next stop was one of the two southernmost missions, San Juan Capistrano.  This mission's plaster had been restored and whitewashed; its bell tower reminds one of a similarly-named mission in another part of the country:

Last stop was Mission Espada, the most exposed site.

  Here, the gift shop is run by the parish, and Sandra picked up a pineapple ice-on-a-stick

We had a BBQ lunch at Bill Miller's BBQ - food was OK, bought they didn't supply any extra sauce at the table.  Won't go back there again.  Then we finally got to experience an urban traffic jam - construction reduced multiple lanes to a single lane, and we couldn't find anything telling how to get to US 90 once we got out of the jam.  A guess and a map sent us the right way, and we were soon running 75mph along a 6/4/finally 2 lane hiway.

As we got away from the big city, we quicklyfound ourselves in the sort of country you see on hunting TV shows. Every ranch, it seemed, advertised quail & deer, with some pushing hogs as well.  Got to our HIE about 3:20, washed clothes, had supper at a BBQ place within walking distance.

For the day 176 miles, 1767 for the trip.  Tomorrowit's US-90 west past Langtry, Alpine, Marfa (hope that cafe is open) and on to Van Horn.