MBR members met on a bright and sunny morning at the Windmill Market shopping center in San Juan Bautista to go on a tour through San Benito County. Ted Voigt was at the helm, with help from president Mark McMahon, vice-president Al Munoz-Flores, and Vega Roecker to sign people in. In past years this was called the Wildflower Tour, and was organized by Wolfgang Leitenberger. Since Wolfgang is no longer with us, first Steve Ponsi and now Ted have taken it over for the past several years and done a fantastic job. Since the wildflowers aren’t always out when we go, Ted renamed it the Springtime Sojourn.
We started out by going out Hwy 156 towards Hollister and turned onto Union Road, where Jack Angel picked up his son Jared. From there we drove to Hwy 25, is a more or less straight shot south, through Tres Pinos (only a few buildings and businesses), then Paicines (blink and you’ll miss it), past the east entrance to the Pinnacles National Park, to Bitterwater (basically a place, not a town), where we turned onto Bitterwater Road and headed to King City. The cows were out, the wild mustard was out, the lupines were out but hard to see and there were occasional patches of California poppies. Hwy 25 dipped and curved around the foothills of the Gabilan Range. Bitterwater Road went first up, then down, over the foothills then through the agricultural fields to King City.
Once in King City we parked in the Town Square behind the Cork and Plough restaurant, where we had lunch reservations. Ted had organized a short flag ceremony and Michael Hesse, Dave Aliotti and Dave Riker conducted an impromptu gas cap concours. If there was a tie, there would be a followup glovebox concours.
Lunch was filling, with choices including prime rib French dip, Ahi tuna salad, pork sliders, chicken salad, and of course burgers of various flavors. We filled the meeting room at the restaurant, with 41 of us present. Ted had arranged for flowers from his back yard in small vases as table decorations, which people could take if they wished, and his daughter had made little tour tags as mementos This tour had filled up the first day after it was announced, with a few people waitlisted. The results of the glovebox concours were announced and awards were presented.
From there we headed north on Metz Road to Soledad, then to Arroyo Seco Road and Fort Romie Road to get to Soledad Mission. Ted had brought some delectable small bites from Patisserie Bechler for dessert, which we had in a small outer building in the forecourt of the mission. The gardens of the mission are impeccable, with rosebushes in front of the building and mounds of California poppies and other flowers around the outer building. This mission was dedicated in 1791. It has a chapel, a gift shop and a museum detailing the history of missions in California. The rest of the mission was destroyed by floods in 1828 and is awaiting a rebuilding effort, to which we contributed.
After a small ceremony for our contribution to the rebuilding effort, everyone made their own way home by whichever route they preferred, with warm memories of a fun day.
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