Weekend Escape: Central California : Mission Impossible : Their Assignment: to Journey Back Into Old California by Visiting Six Historic Missions in Three Days

We planned it as sort of a “mission marathon”--a trek to six of California’s most historic and picturesque spots in less than three days. The itinerary would be ambitious but the pace would be relaxed, allowing time for short side trips, not to mention some fine dining and one night at a really good hotel.

And it would afford me--a native Californian--a rare chance to impress Martha, my Midwestern-born wife, with some basic Southwestern lore, at the same time revisiting some of my favorite haunts of 40 years ago, when I attended high school in the Santa Ynez Valley.

Martha, being a good sport, went along with the whole idea--especially the fine dining and good hotel part--and at 9:30 on a recent Friday morning, we got in the car and headed out of Los Angeles.

Turning northwest at Ventura, we arrived 45 minutes later at Mission Santa Barbara, an imposing hillside complex in an attractive residential district that overlooks the city, the sea and, on a clear day, the Channel Islands. We followed the example of most of the other tourists, gawking up at the mission’s stern Roman-temple facade flanked by massive twin bell towers, before paying $2 apiece--typical for the missions we visited--for a self-guided tour.

The tour included a quick stop at the mission’s museum and side rooms, a quiet pause in the dimly-lit church and a leisurely stroll through the tree-shaded cemetery.

The stunning architecture--especially when viewed from across the broad lawns in front of the church--makes Santa Barbara Mission an impressive place, and it has a history to match. Founded in 1786, it was among the most financially successful of the 21 missions built by the Franciscan padres in California, at one time operating a ranch of 122,000 acres. It is the only mission to remain to this day under control of the founding Franciscan Order.

Emerging from the cemetery, we headed down the hill for lunch at the Harbor Restaurant on Santa Barbara’s Stearn’s Wharf. While the view of passing yachts was first-rate, the pricey seafood was not. Determined not to leave Santa Barbara with a bad taste in our mouths, we headed for Anacapa Street, where a brief stop at some of the well-stocked antique shops and old bookstores worked its magic. And relatively speaking, self-discipline triumphed: We only bought two books.

Then we drove north on Highway 154, the sweeping, two-lane road that climbs the Santa Barbara Mountains to San Marcos Pass. Detouring from the modern highway, we followed the original, twisting road down from the summit to the old log tavern at Cold Springs, where stagecoach drivers a century ago used to water their horses while enjoying a cool beer.

It’s a place I used to visit as a teen-ager, when the ’37 Ford station wagon would boil over on the grade. The tavern’s still in business, the beer is still cold and the big, lumpy dog is the spitting image of his great-great grandfather.

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Back on the new road, we descended quickly into the rolling, oak-studded grasslands of the Santa Ynez Valley. A left turn took us to Solvang and Mission Santa Ines, an improbable bit of Spanish history in a sea of Danish kitsch.

The hourlong tour--self-conducted with the aid of tape-recorded messages that follow you from room to room--was typically upbeat for a mission presentation, giving scant mention to the 1823 uprising of Chumash Indians there against cruel treatment by Spanish soldiers. The Chumash fled after burning a few outbuildings, but in the end fresh troops hunted most of them down, killing them or returning them to virtual slavery.

With all that grim history in mind, we needed something cheerful and we found it--the Grand Hotel in nearby Los Olivos. The Grand is one of those instant Victorians (built in 1985), but unlike so many of the others, there’s very little that’s cutesy about the Grand. Our gabled room was about 20 by 30 feet, complete with a fireplace and elegant furnishings grouped as a parlor at one end and a bedchamber at the other. The bed pillows were down and the sheets were satin-smooth. The spacious bathroom was well-appointed, with lots of fluffy towels. And there were plenty of “amenities,” including a bottle of local wine.

All of this cost a pretty penny--$230 a night. It’s hard to admit, but to us it seemed worth it. And Martha--with two missions down and four to go--remained undaunted. That night, we dined in a genuine Victorian--Mattei’s Tavern, built in Los Olivos in 1886 at the southern end of a narrow-gauge railroad and the northern end of the stagecoach line over the San Marcos Pass.

Except for the addition of a salad bar and some rather trendy items on the menu, the place has changed little since I first saw it in 1949. On cool evenings, local farmers still gather in front of a blazing oak fire in the lobby to swap weather stories. But they’re better dressed now, and they produce fine wines instead of hay.

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The next morning, we violated a personal prohibition against the Disneyesque Danish architecture of Solvang to sample a few delicious pastries at one of the half-dozen shops on Highway 246. Then it was on to La Purisima, the “must” stop on any mission tour.

La Purisima is probably the most completely restored of the missions. Falling into ruin after its abandonment in 1834, the mission was rebuilt as a public works project during the 1930s. It’s now a state park staffed with actors playing the parts of Indians, padres and soldiers. “Indians” bake bread, strip cowhides and weave woolen blankets, taking time out to explain their chores to the steady parade of visitors, who have paid a $4 admission fee. “Padres” putter about, overseeing the work. Cattle, sheep and hogs roam the 900 acres of fenced enclosures that surround the mission.

Admittedly, it’s a trifle hokey. But the setting is tranquil and the demonstrations are informative. The young children visiting that day clearly found it a painless way to learn a little history, and Martha picked up a new bread recipe from an Indian.

We spent two hours there, then headed north for a pleasantly affordable lunch on the terrace at Brubeck’s cafe in San Luis Obispo, a cheerful, hamburgers-and-beer kind of a place, catering heavily to students at nearby Cal Poly.

Brubeck’s overlooks the creek that separates it from the mission in San Luis Obispo. While the modern restoration is a considerable improvement over the efforts of the 1870s--when misguided rebuilders encased the church in clapboard and crowned it with a New England steeple--San Luis Obispo Mission itself was something of a disappointment. Crowded in among the modern buildings of a bustling city, it lacks the grandeur of Santa Barbara and the pastoral quality of La Purisima. But for us there was one dividend--a lively wedding to serve as a reminder that the mission is, first of all, a church.

We spent Saturday night in the popular seaside resort town of Cambria. Unable to find oceanfront rooms on two weeks’ notice, we ended up at the Cambria Pines Lodge, a sprawling complex on a wooded hill outside of town, and dined in downtown Cambria at the cozy Brambles Dinner House on salmon and swordfish.

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On Sunday morning, we drove east on Highway 46--a winding route with breathtaking views of the distant coastline--arriving 45 minutes later at Mission San Miguel, a wide place in Highway 101 noted principally for the church’s patterned frescoes, painted in 1824 and still vivid.

Then we got out our maps and took to the back roads of Monterey County. After checking with a guard at the gate, we began following the signs posted on the dry, open landscape of the Hunter Liggett Military Reservation. And there, in a wide, sunbathed valley, a mile or so from the garrison headquarters, we found another very special link in the mission chain--San Antonio de Padua. The handsome, low-lying buildings and broad, golden fields of the mission are tended by brown-robed Franciscans--friendly caretakers who reclaimed San Antonio in 1928 after more than 90 years of neglect.

Welcoming us inside, the padres showed us around the church buildings and grounds. When I inquired about rainfall, one of them led me half a mile to inspect the reservoir and aqueducts used to irrigate crops in the early 19th Century. Like La Purisima, the San Antonio you see today is more the product of reconstruction than restoration. But this time there was nothing hokey, and the results were unexpectedly gratifying, leaving us with the feeling that “this is how it was.” As we made the 250-mile drive home--pausing along the way for a picnic lunch under an oak tree at Monterey County’s Lake San Antonio Park--we talked about the trip.

We’d seen some beautiful places and learned a lot of California history.

We’d also had a lot of fun.

Budget for Two

Gas for round trip (673 miles): $43.89

Parking: 4.50

Hotel rooms, two nights: 298.90

Seven meals: 175.00

Mission donations: 15.00

Phone, tips, car snacks: 35.00

FINAL TAB: $572.29