On Sunday 25th August, we visited another mission - our usual Sunday tourist stop and the most northern mission so far.

We were ammused by the number of child built models in the mission's museum - from talking to parents in California, every child does a "Mission Project" in primary school and builds a model of their chosen mission - it often ends up being a parent built model and some go over the top. One model, however, did stand out - it was built by prison inmates and had 18,000 miniature roof tiles made of cardboard.

The mission itself was interesting, outside in the garden (they all seem to have a quadrangle with a garden in it) there was a rock border but when we looked closer we realised that lots of the stones were mortar and pestles, used for grinding foodstuffs (missions were designed to be self sufficient) - and some were quite large - similar to those we'd seen that American Indians had used to make flour (they quite possibly were made by American Indians).

After this we drove home, via the inland (quicker than along the coast) with only a few stops. The freeway passed huge corn fields, and passed through some of the flattest land we've seen since driving from Melbourne to Adelaide. We stopped at "James Dean's Last Stop", Blackwell's Corner (17191 Hwy 46, Lost Hills), which is apparently where James Dean bought an apple and a coke before he died. Blackwell's Corner is a sort of general store, although they now sell lots of packaged nuts, and some chocolately-nut creations - similar to Angus Park in The Barossa, but on a smaller scale. We bought some "Pistachio Bark" - white chocolate with pistacios - and some chocolate mocha almonds.

The long journey went quickly because we were listening to a book on CD, this time a murder mystery.