The missionary position
The night before hitting the old El Camino Real, the three-century-old highway built by the Spanish, I looked over the map of California. The plan was to drive south to the Nuestra Señora de Soledad mission in the Salinas Valley and then on to Mission San Antonio de Padua.
But Soledad, I saw, was not only home to one of the old Spanish missionary outposts; across the freeway, the map warned me, was a maximum security prison. Mission San Antonio wasn’t much better off: It is on a US military base where soldiers train for deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Such is California, with the sacred, the profane, and everything in between.
Although state landmarks, the 21 Spanish missions remain secluded and rarely visited. Pegged along Highway 101, formerly El Camino Real, and mostly in rural enclaves, they offer visitors snapshots of an almost primordial California. These quiet, well-preserved colonial outposts are off-the-beaten-path destinations in this busy state of freeways, Disneyland, and Hollywood.