Mission Dolores

I have been reading about the California Missions lately, and have a new ambition to visit all 21 before we move to Singapore. The Bay Area missions are visitable as day trips, but B, R, and I would have to take a several day journey down the coast to see the rest. However, even though R is so small, I think traveling with her is probably doable since she is so portable (as long as she has me and some diapers, she is set). In fact, it would probably be easier to do this now than it will be for a long time. I also want to get used to traveling with her since we will be doing a lot of it soon, and traveling via car in CA is about as low-stress as it gets.

I think the key will be not doing too much, so it would probably take at least 5 days: maybe a week is more realistic (plus visiting the Norcal missions separately). B is tentatively willing: so I will need to cost it out (main cost will be hotel stays) and see if we can do it. Maybe for our wedding anniversary? Actually, I don't want to do it for that, since I want B and I to go somewhere sans little R. Maybe the two of us could go to San Juan Batista, Carmel and Soledad on an overnight, and then the 3 of us could visit the more southerly ones later. I will have to give it more thought.

In pursuit of this goal, I visited Mission Dolores (Mission San Francisco de Asis) with little R this afternoon. She was as good as gold in her carrier, and I was able to take my time and read every placard carefully. The church is quite small but interesting as it's so old (at least by California standards). My favorite part was the Ohlone-created decorations, originally in vegetable dyes, on the church ceiling. The "museum" was obviously not done by professionals, and lacks important elements like identifying reproductions vs. original artifacts. It also suffers from a heavy church bias (featuring extensive info about Junipero Serra's sainthood, for example), but since it's run by the Catholic Church I guess I shouldn't expect much.

They had attempted to modernize it by including a section on the family history of one Ohlone-descended family (ancestors at Mission San Jose/Mission Dolores). This was nice as it demonstrated that Ohlone descendants continue to live in the Bay Area, rather than being strictly in textbooks. However, since the descendants were at best 1/16 Indian (and mostly 1/32 or 1/64 instead), it also demonstrated to me how bogus Indian rights groups tend to be. Being 1/16 Indian (and not speaking the language, living traditionally or practicing any of the ceremonies unless you became interested in later life and derived them from books) seems more like an interesting piece of party trivia, rather than an actual affiliation. Yet the family mentioned was heavily involved in repatriation (of skeletons). It seems bogus, since they are only as Indian as I am Danish: which is to say not at all, except vaguely genetically.