We drove back down to the OC to explore some more sites today. Our first stop was Mission San Juan Capistrano (CHL 200).
This mission is completely restored and gorgeous! They do both guided tours and self-guided audio tours, which we opted to try. It was fun for each of us to be able to listen along at our own pace.
We had to see the famous swallow nesting area-- sadly it was not swallow season!
Many of the rooms have period furnishings and accessories to illustrate mission life.
I loved this display showing the cattle brands for the missions-- I especially like that you can see all of us in the reflection of the glass (artistic photography at it's finest folks!)
They have lots of excavated areas to show you buildings that don't exist any more or the tallow vats.
For those keeping track, this is the 7th mission out of the 21. It was founded by Juinpero Serra in 1776 (during the same time that Garces was exploring Kern County-- see our last post).
The actual church is quite large!
They have done a beautiful job restoring it after it was destroyed in 1812 by an earthquake.
They also have a Lincoln connection here--that both Libi and Daddy were interested in learning all about! In the archives here they actually have the letter from Abraham Lincoln that gave the missions back to the Catholic church after secularization.
They told the story of the bells being the news to the town-- they would ring a certain way when a baby was born and a different way when people would die, they would tell you the time, indicate when important news had arrived and call you to mass.
They also have the ruins of the first church for you to explore.
I highly recommend the audio tour!
Our second site for the day was
Dana Point (CHL 189).
This site is famous for many reasons:
1. It was named after the author Richard Henry Dana who visited here in 1835.
2. It was the cove where ships who wanted to trade with the mission would hide from coastal pirates.
3. Pirate Hipolito Bouchard docked here to raid the mission in 1818.
We then put our landmark looking on hold to visit one of our favorite California spots, Disneyland!!!
Tonight we were lucky enough to attend Mickey's Halloween Party!
