Day 10 - Destination: Santa Barbara, CA

once again, we were hittin' the road. i got up early, hoping to meet megan, who works as a nurse and keeps nurse hours (as in, she goes to work at 9pm and gets home at 7:30am, thereafter promptly going to bed. i don't know how nurses do it). i changed up the back window while i waited eagerly to catch her on her way in. and i was successful. :) we had a great chat (turns out, she, too, is a laura ingalls wilder fan) and then sara and i said goodbye to our little apartment. just want to say, i loved the decor:

we locked up, left our little hostess gifts for ted & megan and rich & melissa, and restuffed our little bug. here again, we were headed into uncharted territory for me as well as sara. i was excited for the drive ahead, and still giddy from our adventure into mexico.
obviously, we had to stop at the local starbucks (where we'd already spent a good deal of time during our stay). for once, i was more alert than sara, i think just from getting up earlier. we hung out in the shade for a little bit before getting on the road. i wanted sara to have a little time to get some caffeine in her system so she wouldn't miss anything.

about an hour into our drive, we got onto "the 1", the pacific coast highway, with visions of grandeur and oceanside driving filling our heads. it really was a beautiful drive. entering california from the west, like we had on day 8, you wonder at all those people back in the 1840's who thought of california as a new eden. everything was brown, dried up, and hot. unbearably hot. the desert seemed to stretch on forever--not a sahara type desert, with miles and miles of sand dunes and camels--but a dry, dusty, barren, mountainous desert, with brittle, vaguely green shrubs dotting sandy dirt. but somehow, you come out on the other side, to the coast, and life and beauty spring forth. southern california is still very dry and has plenty of brown. but all through it brilliant colors and unique foliage are woven through. it overflows with wild oleander in brilliant pinks, virgin whites, orange touched reds. palm trees and strange green shrub-like trees that shoot up straight, tall, and narrow interrupt the brown hillsides. beautiful. and the coast itself is even greener and abounding in flowers and trees and the ocean--deep blue--so different from the atlantic. you begin to understand californians better, just by being here and seeing what they see. at the same time, you can't help wonder: "do they still see the lovely corner of the world in which they live?" as i absorbed the culture around me, i couldn't help thinking that the atmosphere and weather, the landscape, even people's clothes, felt like carefree saturdays.








we weren't exactly sure what our plans were for the drive. we planned to take our time and if we saw somewhere we felt like stopping, we would. the first place that caught our attention long enough to make us stop was newport beach, where christy miller first experienced california. you know, christy miller, who moved with her family from wisconsin to escondido after visiting her aunt and uncle who lived in newport beach. of course we had to stop! we followed the signs for the actual beach and, lucky for us,
found parking (free) in a residential area near a public entrance to the beach. excited at touching and tasting the pacific for the first time in our very long lives (i mean, 25 is OLD), we slipped out of our sandals and walked down the sand to the shore. there were a lot of people on the beach, which, at least to me, was a little new, since i'm so used to the beaches of the outer banks. it looked like you imagine beaches are supposed to look when you're a kid. brightly striped beach umbrellas filling up the sandscape, kids running and screaming and splashing, dads lifting their little ones over waves at the very last minute, scantily clad teen girls self-consciously lying in the warmth and tanning powers of the sun...then we saw the jetty. the one where christy's friend shawn died when he decided to surf off of it while high on something. i made sara pose, although she was pretending she didn't really know who shawn and christy were. we all know better.

wading in the water wet our appetite for some real ocean swimming, but we were holding out for santa barbara. so we continued on the road. we'd been advised to get off the 1 through L.A., but disregarded this well-given advice. it wasn't awful or anything. it just was in no way a feast for the eyes. it was more of a fast for the eyes. or an offense to the eyes. run down outskirts, factory smokestacks looming in the skyline. and lots of lights. it did allow us to hit up a starbucks and nab an L.A. bearista bear. since i was driving through stop and go traffic, it was very impractical and often impossible for me to feed myself anything. so when i got hungry, sara kindly fed me large stacks of salt and pepper kettle chips. mmmmmm. yummy. we arrived at our motel around 4ish and found that we were both exhausted. without even unpacking our stuff for the night, we crashed in our respective beds and quickly drifted off to sleep. i woke up around 8. it didn't look that late outside, so i was a bit surprised we'd slept so long. i decided i'd make a pot of presspot coffee and bring in our stuff from the car before i woke sara up. i had to go across the parking lot to the motel lobby for hot water, and there i had a nice little chat about good coffee and tea with the chick at the front desk.

finally, it came time to waking up sleeping beauty, or we'd never get to downtown santa barbara for dinner. it took grumpypants a good while to manage coherent sentences, even after coffee on the front steps. naturally, i wanted to take some pictures to commemorate our evening and motel. grumpypants proved to be rather unruly and difficult, which never produces flattering pictures, but this one is the most flattering of the three i managed to take before grumpypants threw the camera in the toilet. haha. just kidding. but close. she threatened to throw it out the window, but i deftly maneuvered and muscled for rank, fuel running fast on an empty tank. finally, we pulled ourselves together and headed to state street, deciding we'd walk up and down the street until we found a nice little restaurant with character that tickled our fancy. well, when we actually started walking around it was about 9:30pm. on a monday night. the later it got, the more we realized that if we didn't just pick something soon, there'd be nowhere to pick, apart from some clubs and bars, serving alcohol and loud beats that reverberated half a block down the street. we picked a cute little italian place that looked promising. however, when we asked if they were still serving the response was a disappointing "no." this kind of became the theme of the evening, as our poor stomachs began arguing vehemently with us for real sustenance of some kind. we did come across some cool parts of the town on our search, though:




on our way back down the street towards the water, still searching for a wholesome meal, we made a quick stop at one of the two starbucks, figuring we nab the other one in the morning on our way out of town. we decided any purchase counts, and i didn't have to attempt further consumption of coffee (of which i had already consumed massive quantities), settling for a nice bottle of san pelle. and sara inspected the bathroom. it was fine. from what she told me.





finally, we found the santa barbara brewing company, which had the most important thing to us at this point: an open kitchen. we realized this might be our last opportunity to eat before the morning, so we got ourselves seated and were pleasantly surprised by a nice menu that wasn't horribly expensive. we both gleefully ordered fresh tuna: sara in wrap form, i in steak shape. i also got their raspberry cider which was as delicious as the wholesome food we'd been craving. i'm sure the waitress thought we were a bit loopy, because more than once we told her how much we loved them for having their kitchen open and having food. after that, we headed back to our room for some R&R. i really liked santa barbara. it's a very pretty, rich town. you get the feeling the worst crime they have is rambunctious and spoiled highschool kids, who are so bored they have to make something happen. but it also reminded me of a west coast georgetown. very cool. we spotted a java jones coffeehouse in our wanderings, and decided to stop there for some blog updating before we headed out of town on the morrow. as far as our ocean swimming, the area was having very strange, misty, COOL weather. no sunshine and warmth, not even when we arrived. i know at least i thought we might fit that in the next day. oh, how wrong i was...

--susi&sara