Saturday Family Fun

It's been awhile since we've all been adventuring locally as a family. We used to set off almost every Friday in Adventure Van to see what we could see, but our current homestead-y activities make that kind of hard nowadays. 

However!

Today one of the farther mission churches was open for their annual feast day Mass. This particular church is dedicated to San Juan Bautista--known in non-Spanish-speaking places as St. John the Baptist--and today is his feast day. So this tiny church in the middle of nowhere is open this one day a year for this Mass.

We had to go down that way to drop the school bus off (we're getting a brand-new school bus this year, hooray!), so we decided to go.

Now. When I say, "that way," I mean in the general vicinity. There was a whole lot of this off the paved road before we got to the right community.

Such a Western view.

We did eventually find the church, after thirty minutes and ten miles of dirt road from the pavement.

It was a modest place.

We walked in juuuust as Mass was starting, and the guy in charge of the church asked me to do the readings.

Uh. Okay.

I don't know who was going to do them if we hadn't walked in the door, but whatever. 

This is not one of the more beautiful churches we've been to, but it has an interesting history. It's way back in a creek-side community that actually still has maybe a dozen occupants. One of those occupants is a man who spent most of his adult life in California, but came back to his family's lands in the 1990s. He found the adobe church abandoned--interior stripped, walls crumbling--and restored it almost by himself. He even found the pieces of the original altar in the schoolhouse of a (relatively) nearby village and replaced it.

Anyway. After church we looked around the small cemetery, which is pretty much all that guy's family.

Most of the headstones were hand-carved from the local stone.

This grave had asparagus planted in it. 

Asparagus does grow wild here, but someone had to have transplanted it purposely to this particular spot.

I immediately told A. that my grave (far in the future, I hope) should likewise be planted with a long-lived edible perennial. I suggested rhubarb, and then the children could make a pie in my honor every year.

Is that too weird? Don't answer that.

On our way back, we stopped at an imposing structure we could see from the dirt road. With an ancient bulldozer parked in front of it.

The children were thrilled.

We couldn't figure out what this building was. It was the highest stone building I've seen around here, but it was just one lofty story with one room. And a giant door.

It almost looked like a church, although I don't know why there would be another only a couple of miles from the one we went to.

Just across the track from this structure was an old homestead. It was a very good example of an old, owner-built homestead of the sort that used to be ubiquitous here before the railroad brought materials from elsewhere.

Three-room adobe house with some of the original dirt roof remaining, although most of it had been replaced by tin roofing at some point.

Dry-stone barn.

Windmill.

And some flowers I can't identify but that were obviously purpose-planted next to the hand-dug well.

I wish I could have gathered seeds from that plant, because talk about a plant that is a survivor.

After a quick snack of graham crackers and nuts, back in the van we went to make our way home.

Country roads, indeed.

It was nice to get off the property and explore a little more. No matter how many adventures we have, there's always more to see.