Juan Bautista National Historic Trail (San Juan Bautista State Park)

7/20/15. We started our Northern California road trip today! We left Burbank early in the morning with our goal to reach San Francisco by evening. We took the coast road up to Santa Barbara and stopped at El Capitan State Beach for a short walk on the beach.

We then followed the Juan Bautista National Historic Trail all the way to San Francisco. According to the National Park Service website, "In 1775-76, Anza led some 240 men, women, and children on an epic journey to establish the first non-Native settlement at San Francisco Bay. Today, the 1,200-mile Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail connects history, culture, and outdoor recreation from Nogales, Arizona, to the San Francisco Bay Area."

Along the way, we stopped at San Juan Bautista State Historic Park to get one of the National Park Stamps that we didn't have yet. We were surprised to find a lovely museum and period buildings surrounding a large central plaza. The main building was a hotel with period furnishings and a very bad video. Among the other buildings were the Plaza Hall, the jail, the Mission, and a Livery that had a wonderful collection of horse-drawn carriages. There was a wide range of styles from plain ones that families might have used to very fancy ones that would have been driven with coachmen.

There were also beautiful views of the surrounding hills and the summer fields.

All in all, this was a little gem of  historical park that we were pleased to find. We continue to realize that collecting the national park stamps has led us to an amazing array of interesting places that we would not have otherwise visited!