Wandering Wednesday - San Juan Bautista

 I know, it's been all about the retreat the past few days, but here's some more about the place itself, San Juan Bautista. I don't think I've been here since the long ago CQFA show (August 2000!) that I helped put on at the Gallery Tonantzin. The gallery building is still there, it's an old adobe from the 1800's and right behind it is a fabulous Mexican restaurant, Jardines de San Juan. After meeting at the quilt shop, Family Threads, we all gathered there to eat and chat, very fun. My neck is still a bit sun-burned.

I took this picture at the restaurant because I liked the combination of the colors, shapes and textures of the flowers, leaves, the pot color, and the bricks.

After we ate, we still had some time before the retreat center was going to be ready for us so we strolled up and down the Main Street. A lot of the little shops were open which was fun. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was nice to be outside. I was trying to get a picture of the cool vintage bakery sign across the street, but here you can see the super green hills around town.

There are some enormous old gnarled pepper trees along the street, seen in the upper left foreground, and some great vintage presumably original storefronts.

There's a small rose garden park with a foreboding sentry plant along the street, this big cactus, eeek! Seeing all those nearly ripe cactus fruits, aka prickly pears, reminded me of my Grandpa Zaccone harvesting his for us in the summer. with his big leather work gloves, pliers and strict instructions for us kids to Not Touch them until he was done. Oooh, were they ever tasty.

I loved the tunnel of trees driveway up to the retreat center. It's just past the turnoff for Fremont Peak where we've been camping.

The St. Francis Retreat Center is a very nice place, it had come highly recommended to our group from another quilt guild. I found it to be very well-laid out, spacious grounds, good parking, and some nice walking trails. There as a beautiful pond which you can kind of see past the trees there. Just a lovely place to be ( and to do Quilty stuff too).

The redbud trees were in bloom and they were just stunning. Such a beautiful magenta.

I admired the well kept but also sort of natural looking gardens surrounding the buildings. There were a lot of massive oak trees which are always lovely to be around.

The workroom  was plenty big for the number of people we had at the retreat. They're very used to hosting quilt groups, so they had ironing boards and enough power for us to use.

This was the view from where I parked my car, way up on the hill is a crucifix that's lit up at night.

It was very starry and clear one night.

At the end of our weekend, we all hung up a piece of what we'd been working on, and it was really impressive to see all that work, pow!

There were great prize bags given away during the weekend, the grand prize being this fabulous bag that friend Jaye made, seen here with the lucky and happy, Alison.

Quilt retreats are So Much Fun! I can't wait until next year. Thanks, BAM.