An Artistic Journey on the Trails of Mission San Jose
Today's hike we went to Mission San Jose which is pretty close to our house. We'd been meaning to hike there for a while, but kept going when they were closed too late in the evening. Today we left in the morning and had a fun little jaunt through history and nature.
The grounds is much bigger than I thought, according to my pedometer its about .35 miles around one trip around the grounds inside the mission itself. Lots of cool historic things. One, I saw a priest wearing the old long brown robe, with a rope belt. I asked my wife if that was an actual priest or cosplayer or reenactor or something. She told me its a real priest. The church on the grounds is still an active church. I attended some funerals there years ago when relatives died, though it had been awhile.
She said the priests dress like that because of the history of the site. I didn't get a picture of him because I didn't want to seem like a crazy person whipping my phone out to take a picture of this guy who was just walking into the church. I took mental note of it though.
Here's a distant view of the mission and church.
From there, we got a glimpse of the inside of the church. They've renovated it since I was last there several years ago, and its got a lot more gold and artsy things than the years ago. Pretty nice building.
I grew up Baptist, so none of our churches were ever this fancy. One Pentecostal church I attended in my late 20s was an old movie theater that had been converted. I guess protestants like plain things so they don't seem Catholic. (Mind you I'm Buddhist now mostly).
From there we headed down the trail, out of the mission grounds themselves and through a quiet woods. We did see some women dressed in business attire taking pictures and walking the trails. Maybe we were over prepared or they were under prepared, but it was just kind of a strange site seeing them in dress close and pumps walking along a paved hiking trail.
That trail went on for about .7 of a mile and said it led to the river, but it actually led to the road which I think you had to walk along the road for a bit then hit the river, but we didn't want to walk on the road or go that much further, so we turned and headed back.
The wooded area was mostly nice and quiet.
It still blows me away we have so man kind of secluded, nature areas in our big city and this close to our own house. Like driving down the street you'd never guess most of this was here. I didn't even know most of this was here and I've lived here for 15 years. I knew the mission was here, just not all the trails leading off of it.
Our pace seems pretty consistent most hikes at about 2.4-.5 miles per hour which isn't breaking any records,but we're old and tired so I'm pretty proud of it. We also stop frequently to catch our breath and drink water out of the back pack. We ended up going for 1.6 miles which is a record for us. Pretty good too considering our legs were still sore from walking the trail with the huge hills a few days ago.
Our best distance so far had been 1.3 miles. Considering this is only our second week hiking, I think we are making some pretty good progress. So, that was our adventure at the mission today. Our walk time was about 42 minutes,, once again not breaking any records, but pretty good for us. I'm sure we'll go faster and farther in time. In the meantime I prefer to just bop along and enjoy the view.