A Beautiful Day.

This post is overdue...we went on an adventure last week, we hit two missions and the beach in a single day. We headed west and stopped at Mission San Juan Bautista. We were there for a wedding about three years ago. The picture of the kids on the bench, under the bell was taken in the gardens there. It's a nice place, rich in history, of course, and beauty.



We left there and made a beeline for Carmel. Before we toured the mission, we found a secluded place in a nearby park and made a picnic. It was fun. I am usually not prepared with the necessary accoutrement for any picnic but we took a few extra minutes to pack before we left that morning. So glad we did because it was nearly a perfect picnic. It was a heck of a lot better than scrambling for a place to eat lunch in not all that familiar territory, while cranky, hunger laden, and trip weary in the middle of the day.

Funny thing is that now, wherever we go, Eva insists that we go home to use the potty, even if we are two hours from home. That makes things a little interesting, but with her own private toilet seat in tow and some major convincing, it all worked out OK.

And the Carmel Mission itself, I'm sure I have never been there because I would definitely remember it. It's maybe the most beautiful place I have ever visited. It's real name is San Carlos de Borromeo de Carmel Mission and I can very much understand why they made it a Minor Basilica [implying great historical and artistic importance] in the 1960's. This photo of Sarah in an old wooden chair in the courtyard is my favorite of the day.



Tony found a large engraved block on the floor in the chapel commemorating Pope John Paul II's visit there in 1987. He was so surprised when he realized that it was the very day he himself [along with 50,000 others] had seen the Pope celebrate mass in nearby Monterey.

My kids were desperately trying to climb into the fountain even though it was not such a warm day and there were signs posted for no climbing [duh]. I think I must have warned and pulled Wyatt off of at least a hundred things he tried to climb. I just don't want to be responsible for the destruction of [relatively] ancient California artifacts as much as my son wouldn't mind if I were.



The beach was cold and windy but we found a warm mountain of sand and played for about an hour. Very nice. We ended the day with a quick visit to Rafi and Miriam in Gilroy and arrived home promptly at 11 p.m. It was a very good day.



I took hundreds of pictures, you know research purposes, it was an educational trip after all. You can see lots more here. It was really hard to take a bad picture with all that beauty around us that day.