We are camped at a lovely campground above El Capitan Beach near Goleta. We've been in the Santa Barbara area many times, but never here. As we look out our front window we can see the ocean, but it is a long view and we are up. The state park is below us, walking distance.
We walked down to the beach right away.
Wednesday we had a Santa Barbara County wine country drive and picnic. Our first stop was Rusack. We had joined their wine club when we toured here about 10 years ago, and it is the only one, out of four, that we still have. Wonderful wines not widely available. They sell mostly at the winery and in limited CA locations. We tasted there, and had a picnic lunch. Lovely!
We walked around charming Los Olivos. The is where Sideways was filmed. Here are some street scenes from Los Olivos.
We drove several roads used in the movie. Our timing is perfect for wildflowers and green. Soon it will be "golden".
Yesterday we drove the short distance to the UC Santa Barbara campus and walked around. The campus is very near the ocean and it was a bit foggy and very cool. The campus, architecturally,
Is not very interesting. Most of the buildings where we were are 50's and 60's, not a great time for architecture. The campus was jumping. Bikes everywhere with steady streams of bikes on the many bikeways. We even saw one traffic circle for bikes.
Long line of students waiting to get in to the Luminarium (whatever that is).
We then drove over to Santa Barbara for lunch at the very first and now only surviving Sambo's restaurant, now an historic landmark.
Then we walked around downtown SB. We had toured the beautiful mission on a previous trip so didn't do that again.
But we did tour the fabulous Santa Barbara Botanic Garden which is up the hill a ways. The garden surrounds the historic Mission Dam and Aqueduct, built in 1807 by the mission friars and Indians to supply water to the mission. It is built of rock which survives to this day.
The garden displays native California plants in a natural setting. Founded in 1926, it encompasses about 60 acres or so with winding trails and displays: Arroyo, Canyon, Ceanothus (CA lilac), Desert, Manzanita, Meadow, and Redwood sections. We walked all of them. (Be sure to click these photos to enlarge them)
We were lucky to see this at peak bloom!
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