Today we wanted to visit the Mission Trail that features 4 Spanish missions over an 8 mile bike and walking trail winding through old neighborhoods and farmlands along the San Antonio River.
By car was way to boring and we had seen that several BCycle stations were along the trail and decided to go this route.
Starting at the most sourthern mission Mission Espada and mile marker 10 we parked the car and visited the mission, where a Sunday church service was being performed.
There is a bike station just down the trail, insert your credit card and pay $ 12.00 per bike for a 24 hour rental period. You have to return the bikes within 1 hour at any station or pay a penalty if used longer. Just what we needed – added pressure on a Sunday.
Mission San Juan de Capistrano at mile marker 8.5 was our second stop. So drop the biked back in the rack, receive a text message confirming the drop and off to the mission.
Unfortunately not much but the church building and a few walls is left of this mission. The Sunday services were held here as well as we visited.
Off to get the next set of bikes, and we were lucky that the set we had used to get here was still available. By this time the clouds had parted and the sun had come out. The next mission being almost 2 miles away, we figured we better get going to stay within the 1 hour rental period.
Mission San Jose is a bit off the mission trail and it took us a while to find it. But we made it in 58 minutes, dropped the bikes, got the text message and started looking for water.
Luckily all the missions have a water fountain were you can fill up your water bottle. Since the sun beat down so much, Kisten decided it may also be a good time to look for a hat before visiting the mission.
This is by far the largest and best kept of the missions and we spend a good while taking in all the sights.
Off to the last mission and we had to admit that we were getting tired. Mission Concepcion being at mile marker 3 was going to be a good ride away. This time we were not so furtunate and our original bikes were gone. We picked a new set and headed off to the last mission to visit.
We knew we were getting close, as the outlines of downtown San Antonio could be seen
This mission is also well preserved, but on the smaller side. A street festival was going on around the mission, so we had some difficulty finding the bike racks. But we did, dropped them off, received the text message and off to the last mission of the day
Now we were really tired and the 6 mile trip back did not really endear to us at all, so we found the Mission bus and hitched a ride back. Unfortunately the bus only goes to Mission San Juan, so we had a little over a mile left to get back to the car.
When we got to Mission San Juan there were only 2 bikes left and we wondered what one would do if there were none left….
We hopped on and quickly found out why they were the last 2 left, these 3 speed bikes were down to 1 speed and barely made it out of the gate.
But we had an extraordinary day biking, seeing history, refilling our water bottles and getting a decent suntan.
And Kirsten got her hat
An adventure sure to be recommended as we had now seen all 5 missions, having been to the Alamo yesterday
