Mission La Purisima

We took this little detour to Mission La Purisima thanks to Samantha over at Pipodoll. In her blog Samantha has (among other things) been chronicling & singing praises of the missions she visited with her family on a road trip in April. When I realized we were going to be driving past one of Samantha's favorite missions on our way home from Oxnard yesterday, I decided we should pay it a visit, too.



What was fascinating about this mission (besides the beautiful and dramatic landscape surrounding it) was the number of furnished rooms.

Looking at the old beds, chests, books, paintings, clay & stone cooking-ovens, etc... it was not difficult to imagine what it must have been like to live here 200 years ago.

The art work was exquisite and so were the gardens.

There were also horses, sheep, pigs & turkeys on the site. Samantha (over at Pipodoll) e-mailed to tell me that, if we had had apples, we could have made friends with the sociable horses. As it was, we had no apples but spent a fair amount of time socializing with this very un-sociable fellow. We were fascinated by his pendulous wattles and ostentatious feather display -- and we had a good laugh when our turkey-friend "gobbled" loudly at little Mr. My little one nearly jumped out of his shoes in fright!

Thank you, Samantha, for inspiring a wonderful adventure!