San Antonio Missions Hike and Bike Trail
San Antonio is famous for the Alamo, but the city also has four other Spanish missions, all in much less urban settings south of the Alamo and downtown San Antonio.
You can certainly drive between all four of the missions - Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan, and Espada, but you can just as easily bike between them.
The Mission trail is about a 15 mile round trip if you do all four missions - if you want to make it shorter for a family trip, cut out Mission Concepcion, because that mission requires some bike lanes on city streets.
The Mission trail is not well signed at all. The missions will give you a photocopy of the trail map at http://www.nps.gov/saan/planyourvisit/hikebike.htm, but there are no markers for the hike and bike trail.
Starting from Mission Concepcion, you will follow the brown road signs to Mission San Jose, until you reach Mission Parkway (a left turn) - this may be closed because of high water in the river, so you would then need to follow the brown road signs. Follow Mission Parkway down to a paved six foot wide trail in Padre Park - this is also all changing with the extension of the Riverwalk with the Mission Reach.
Take the paved trail down to a T-intersection with another paved trail coming from the right. You should see brown road signs directing traffic on Mission Parkway to go to Mission San Jose by turning to the right - take that paved trail instead of the road for half a mile. After you are done with Mission San Jose, come back on the offshoot trail to the main Mission trail.
Headed south to Missions San Juan and Espada, the trail will narrow and become very broken up - not suited for road bikes - take the road instead. Mountain or cross bikes should be fine. The trail follows the San Antonio river down to the Ashley Street bridge. Take a left there to go to Mission San Juan, or continue down the trail to go to Mission Espada. Right after the turn off on the bridge to the left will be another unmarked paved trail coming in from the right - that goes to the Espada Aqueduct over a creek. That's a nice shady area to relax and have a cold drink.
Continue on down the trail to Mission Espada. You can either turn around here and go back the way you came (making a turn over the Ashley St. bridge to Mission San Juan if you skipped it), or you can add two easy road miles over a low water crossing to go from Mission Espada to Mission San Juan by following the road Mission signs.
