BayWing

My Mom and Dad have been visiting from Florida. They arrived on Thursday 14 September and will fly back to FL on 3 October. On this Wednesday we went to visit Mission San Francisco or Mission Dolores. The misson was founded in 1776 beside a little inlet called Laguna Dolores. One of the greatest recorded earthquakes of all time shook San Francisco in 1906, but the thick walls of the old mission church stood firm. Today it remains the oldest building in San Francisco.

Mom and I like Mission La Purisima Concepción, the mission near Lompoc. We like it because it is in a rural setting and it seems easier to imagine the mission as it was when it was built and active. The missions inside cities seem to have changed more with the cities around them. Wesley, Sam and Mom all took photos.

Wesley took this one from the back of the misson:

and with our family: Wesley, Sam, Diane & Marguerite

These are the stairs up to the Choir loft

There was some fancy wood carving on one of the side walls

There was a display that showed the mission as it was in the late 1700s.

Wesley also took photos of the Basilica. Churches designated as patriarchal basilicas have a status in the Catholic church that I don’t completely understand.

The stained glass windows represent the various California missions. The one shown below represents San Juan Bautista.

This statue caught my attention. The cat and dog are letting the mouse eat in peace.

We went to lunch down the street at the Red Jade. The food was quite generous and good. Mom and I enjoyed a condo that had a garden painted on to the walls at ground level. (no photo). From there we went to Golden Gate Park to visit the Japanese Tea Garden. The Tea Garden was one of the places Mom remembered visiting when Mom and Dad lived in Monterey in the early 1950s.

I was the only person in our family to go over the arched bridge.

I was disappointed that there were not any Koi in the water structures.

Wesley caught a photo of Dad and me.

Wesley also threw in a self portrait.

It was about 5 pm when we left the Tea Garden. Most of the other points of interest in Golden Gate Park were closed, but it was not a good time for traffic leaving SF on a week day. We drove west to the coast and then north to Baker Beach off Lincoln Blvd in the Presidio. From there we could see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

A few family photos: First Dad and me [Sam J. Blackwood & Diane J. Blackwood].

Then Diane, Sam and Marguerite.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 1:24 pm by Wesley R. Elsberry and is filed under SF Bay Area. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.