Santa Barbara!

Last week I had 3 (three!!) days off so I headed up to Santa Barbara for a little sight-seeing.

It was great, I toured the Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez missions, talked with strangers, hung out on the pier, watched dolphin and seals in the ocean, tatted, read Jorge Luis Borges, did some writing, almost went on a glider flight over the valley (too overcast), and ate excellent blackberry pie with an awesome crust at a place that also had very beautiful baked potatoes. It even rained one night for about 20 minutes which was very nice. I can't wait to be out in the (parked) van in a proper rain storm, preferably somewhere with a nice view.

It was also a nice experiment in going to a new place and finding (free) places to sleep. This involved some driving around, but wasn't too hard, except for getting crazy lost one night in Goleta and ending up on a dirt road somewhere near the UC Santa Barbara campus. It was nice to know that I could show up in a new town and find places, though Santa Barbara is pretty friendly to homes on wheels.

The state parks up there are $25 a night. Seeing that just makes me like the grocery store parking lots more. You can eat quite well on $25. And I did. Spent too much money on food that week, but it was well worth it.

Yesterday, I spent the holiday morning at work taking advantage of the fact that there was no around and I could actually get a editing booth, and then spent the afternoon hiking. Except for the heat (which was actually not as bad as the weekend) it was quite a pleasant day. Though I did kill my battery running the fan and the radio in the evening. Got a jump from the vandweller parked next to me and was on my way.