The Mission Courtyard...

...is an homage to the California Missions. On the interior walls of the courtyard were murals of all of the twenty-one missions in the system, in addition to the pictured state map with their locations. From the tour booklet we learned something we'd never heard in all our many mission tours - the traditional fountains most often had three levels so that chickens could drink from the bottom tier, horses from the middle, and people from the top! (Gratefully, the water would be purest there. Wouldn't it?)