Santa Barbara, CA

Santa Barbara Harbor

"Jim"

We've been here about a week and gotten out a few times.  We're located up on a hill just across US 101 from the El Capitan Beach State Park and next to El Capitan Canyon.  We're due north of Santa Rosa Island, but unable to see the Channel Islands very well due to low hanging clouds.  Doesn't matter, though.  Donna enjoys her walks to and around the beach and watching the "human" seals do their thing.

While somewhat expensive, Ocean Mesa is a really nice campground. In my mind, it's an accurate example of a RV resort.  Maybe had a dozen and a half units in the campground for Super Bowl weekend.  Most were San Francisco fans.  Donna says San Francisco lost because these guys couldn't keep their inflatable San Francisco football player upright!  Could have been it knew what was coming...

I was here for a few hours back in 2006 and thought Santa Barbara was a neat place.  This time I see it as crowded, expensive, and almost makes you claustrophobic.  So the "neat place" is now a little tarnished in my mind.  I would suggest you visit and see for yourself, though.    If you drive a compact car and have $600,000 to blow on a $150,000 house, this may just be your kinda place.  The weather's certainly nice enough (though we're expecting a wet, cold weekend.)

Map of the Reagan Ranch

Pictures here are to give you an idea of the things we've done.  First up is the Santa Barbara Harbor followed by a couple of pictures from the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum.  Following that are two pictures from the Reagan Ranch Center.  We got to visit it on Reagan's B-Day when they were throwing a small party.  Not a big museum, but definitely worth a stop (as is the Enterprise Fish Co. for lunch.)

The next four pictures are of the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens.  Primarily a teaching enterprise, it sits next to the Mission de Santa Barbara and contains plants native to California.  While the trees & plants are different, Donna and I felt we were back walking through Shenandoah National Park due to the landscape.  We had a great time there!

The bottom picture is one from a vista point off US 101 just west of us. We'd headed out searching for the Point Conception Lighthouse and never found it.  Turns out we can't get there from here, but found this nice stop on the way back.

That's it for us this week.  Still plan on visiting the Natural History Museum, Zoo, and the mission before returning to Port Hueneme next weekend.

Later, David

Redwoods!

Dam built after the Mission was established.