Yoo 206 - A Friday Afternoon At Work...Skipped

Bear had veteran's day off.  I found out on Monday.  It was a brief texting conversation.  And after I relayed that I'd be willing to take some time off too, he texted me one of the most brilliant ideas he's had to date:

"We should bike the mission trail."

Ok!

I'd visited the San Antonio missions before but actually biking mission trail had been on my hit list for a while.  Actually, I wanted to find out if there was indeed a trail to bike because I had my doubts.  I hadn't heard anybody talk about it who had actually done it (except Bear, but really, he was only 12 when that happened, and how reliable could his 12-year-old brain 14 years later be?  I needed to see for myself...).

So I sent off my out of office email, worked really hard all Friday morning (end of year performance evaluation, ugh) and hop-skipped-jumped out to my car at one o'clock.  See ya!

It was a beautiful day weather-wise and I was so excited to not be cooped up in the office!  Though I can't complain about the beautiful view of San Antonio that I have from my new desk...

First stop:  Mission Concepcion.  Talked to the ranger, found out there is a trail, but it's a mess.  I guess there's an initiative to rebuild it from Mission Concepcion on south.  So the trail was a no-go but she highlighted a nice route on a map for us and we were on our way.

It was an easy bike ride south to Mission San Jose (mostly following Mission Rd).  The traffic wasn't bad (especially for a Friday afternoon), there was a bike lane most of the way, and the neighborhoods were colorful (and not in the "colorful" way, but in the "kind of cute and unique and fun to look at" way).  Mission San Jose is pretty big and I think has the most structure remaining of the four.  Lots to look at there.  And it's where the USAA band does one of their spring concerts every year (fun night...you should go!).

Another nice park ranger at Mission San Jose directed us on the route down to Mission San Juan.  This was my favorite leg of the bike ride.  It took us down more quiet, scenic streets, past a really colorful graveyard (seriously, every single one of the hundreds of grave sites was covered in all sorts of bouquets...it was like it was right around Dia de los Muertos on the Hispanic side of town or something...wait...yeah, that was it), and right by an airport!  (more on that later).

(Helmet hair.  Represent!)

After a short picnic of peanut-butter jelly sandwiches, sweet potato chips (new fav), and turkey jerky, we hit the road again for Mission Espada.  I lied above, because, this was actually my favorite part of the ride.  We were really out in the boonies at this point driving on what seems like country roads.  Tree-lined part of the way even!  Can't beat that in San Antonio.  The sun was lower in the sky at this point so the greens were really vibrant against the blue sky and it was just gorgeous.  Mission Espada is, I think, the prettiest mission remaining and we spent more time walking around there.  Plus, there was a wedding going on...call us creepers but it made for some fun people watching!

Can that please be a fireplace??  I claim this corner.

From Mission Espada, we decided to ignore the park ranger's advice to take the "safer" road back (Villamain Rd - the one we had just come down from Mission San Juan) and instead curve around on Espada road to head back to see the aqueduct.  Bear and I nicknamed this the bumpity-bump-bump street because that's what we were singing as we bumpity-bump-bumped along (to the tune of Frosty the Snowman....I think it's the chorus part??).  I dared him to spit as we crossed the bridge over 410 but he wouldn't do it.  He's too nice...

The Espada aqueduct is puh-rit-ee.  Not a lot to see but it's a nice little park and I really wished we had saved our picnic for there (though, lets get real, I wouldn't have made it that long...I was hungry before the trip even started). 

Ok, the really best part of the trip?

Airplanes!

The route takes you all around the Stinson airport, which is really small, but really fun.  There's a flying school there and we watched several planes practice touch-and-go landings all afternoon.  Plus, we realized we were riding along part of the San Antonio Rock 'n' Roll marathon route, which is being run this Sunday.  Kind of jealous of those runners...it's a great route!

After the airport, we leisurely (ok, I thought it was leisurely but Bear just accused me of not know the definition of leisurely...) re-traced our route back up Mission Road to Mission Concepcion and got there with about an hour to spare before the sun went down.  All in all, the adventure took us just shy of 3 hours.  It was really easy riding and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  

And, on the way back, I decided I want to be on a lamppost banner someday.

Have a great day :-)