El Camino Real Road & Bells

El Camino Real (Spanish for The Royal Road, also known as The King's Highway) is the original road in California that connected the 21 missions, 4 presidios and several pueblos. They stretch from Mission San Diego to Mission Solano north of San Francisco. Mission settlements were approximately 30 miles apart so that they were separated by a long day's ride on horseback along the 600 mile road. Tradition says that the padres sprinkled mustard seeds along the trail in order to mark it with bright yellow flowers. In 1892 an effort was initiated to preserve the route.  Since that was before street signs, they decided to place distinctive bells along the route, hung on supports in the form o an 11-foot high shepherd's crook, also described as a "Franciscan walking stick".

Over the years many of the bells disappeared due to vandalism, loss of the routing, etc until there was only about 80 left. The state began a restoration project in 1996 and today, 555 bells mark the original trail. Most of the trail runs close to various highways/roads in California including Hwy 101 and sometimes through cities. I began seeing the bells an hour or so south of San Francisco along Hwy 101. Sometimes they are close to the road and sometimes out in pastures. I took this one while driving.  My entertainment was looking for the bells... 8-) 

At right is the bell marker in front of my destination, Mission San Buenaventura in Ventura, CA. The thing that made the whole drive interesting in looking at the bells, knowing what they were and represented was that Larry's 8th great-grandfather was the scout who helped identify the locations for the missions, traveled with Father Serra, etc.