After the heat of Death Valley, the cooler weather of Santa Barbara was very welcome. It certainly wasn’t cold though, as the temperatures were consistently clearly above +20C during the day. At night the temperature dropped to around +16C. We did not stay in Santa Barbara itself, but in a small town near it called Carpinteria. We had spotted this apartment on Airbnb, after first checking out what Booking.com had to offer, and finding it really expensive. Our accommodation this time was a small caravan in the backyard of the owners’ house. There were also two cats, two dogs, two horses and chicken in the yard. The chicken laid their eggs daily, so we could pick up fresh eggs from the henhouse if we wanted. It was also possible to pet or feed the other animals. Needless to say, this was a place the kids loved.
As there were no real “must see” things in Santa Barbara, we started the morning in a relaxed way. We slept relatively late and had breakfast outside. Afterwards, the kids went to give the horses carrots and practiced lassoing. Jaana continued to write the blog, and Marko took care of writing down the travel budget. It was well after noon when we left by car for Santa Barbara.
The children also had the chance to practice lassoing. After a short training session and a bit of cooperation, the bull got caught. Perhaps a little more practice is needed before the children can be entered in the next rodeo competition.
First, we visited the port of Santa Barbara. It wasn’t a very big area, so it was pretty quick to see. At the harbour, it would have been possible to take guided boat trips around the area around Santa Barbara, but this time we skipped them. We also skipped the fish restaurants in the harbour, much to the relief of the kids. They would have had all kinds of seafood from swordfish to sea urchin.
Surprisingly, the city centre was not built around the port, as in most cities. So we had to continue our journey by car, as it was still about 3.5km to the city centre from the port. In one direction we could have walked it with the kids, but the round trip might have been a bit too long.
The city centre was nothing like we had imagined it to be. All the houses were low-rise, two-storey at most, and the area had a nice small-town feel. Santa Barbara is not quite a small town, however, with a population of just over 83 000. We got the car into the garage and started walking down the main street towards the beach. The main street was reserved for cyclists and walkers only. Cyclists rode on the “driveway” and pedestrians on the sidewalks on either side of it. There were wooden chairs here and there along the cycle lane, where you could sit and watch the goings-on in the area if you wanted to.
The street was mainly lined with small clothes shops and various restaurants. Somehow, the place reminded of Coronado, near San Diego. There were hardly any big chain stores along the street, and the atmosphere was somehow more upscale. Santa Barbara is also where many celebrities live or vacation. At least Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Spielberg own a home here (too). Unfortunately, we didn’t meet any celebrities on this trip, or at least we didn’t recognise any.
We had an early dinner at an Indian restaurant. We assumed the food was good there because there were also Indian people dining there. We were right, as the food was really delicious. The children tried the Indian equivalent of Coke (“Thumbs up”) and SevenUp (“Limca”).
After dinner, we returned to the caravan, and as the evening grew dark, we roasted marshmallows at the children’s request. One of the cats on the site, Miss Lucy, also came along, but apart from a scratch we didn’t give her anything else.
Before going to bed, Marko performed a kind of miracle of fitting in the toilet of our caravan. (Now follows the scoop on poop, skip over if the subject doesn’t excite you…) This stamp-sized lump that serves as a toilet is so small that we adults can’t fit in it properly. Once you close the door, you can’t even take off your trousers, let alone climb onto the toilet itself. (The toilet is on a kind of pedestal in this cubicle.) If you have to go to the bathroom, the toilet is too small for an adult turd, and you have to bend over towards the shower space to wipe yourself. Well, as I said, Marko couldn’t escape the inevitable, and had to go to the toilet for poo. The whole carriage swayed and swayed as Marko tried to manage with any reseblance of dignity, but finally everything got flushed and Marko was able to go to sleep.
In the morning Miss Lucy, and also the other cat on the site, Miss Kay, had parked themselves in front of our caravan. Both were apparently waiting for us to go out for breakfast in the hope of getting something to eat themselves. This time again we stood firm, and the cats were again left without a treat. The horses, on the other hand, were again given breakfast carrots by the children.
Since we had not yet explored the city of Carpinteria at all, we decided to go and see what it was like. There was nothing much to see in the city. It was a pretty ordinary little seaside town. We parked the car near the beach, and set off to walk along what was advertised as a nature trail. The idea was to get to the beach where the seals were hiding. It wasn’t a very long walk, maybe a couple of kilometres, but it wasn’t much of a nature trail. Mostly we walked alongside the caravan site, stopping a few times to take photos of both the seascape and the caravans.
We took pictures of the caravans because camping seemed to be quite a race for bragging rights! It looked like the people had taken almost all their belongings with them. A whole range of kitchen utensils, from a grease cooker to a waffle iron, was often on display in front of the caravans. Outside, huge canopies were erected in front of the caravans, under which a dining table with tablecloths and flowers was set up. Some caravans were completely surrounded by portable fencing elements, so that a dog could run free in front of the caravan. Of course, there were also huge sacks of firewood, bicycles, small scooters for the children, a flagpole with flags and, of course, outdoor lights to hang on trees, bushes and the caravan. One couple also brought their own illuminated palm tree, because that is of course essential when camping! With this amount of stuff, you probably don’t want to change camping places very often.
The seascapes and caravans ended up being the only things to photograph. The path leading to the seal colony came to a surprising dead end, so we had to turn back. We saw from the map that the beach could also be reached by car, so after a combined lunch and dinner we decided to visit the beach by car. This time we bought our food from a small hot dog stand on the beach. Risto had a hot dog, but the rest of us had tacos and burgers. There was a tempting-sounding chili burger on the menu, so Jaana decided to try it. We also ordered the equally delicious sounding chilli cheese fries. We thought that chilli meant chilli as a spice, but when we got the food, it turned out that the chilli was actually a spicy minced meat sauce. It was good too, but it’s not often you get to eat a burger with a beef patty covered with ground beef sauce.
Visiting the seal colony by car was not a great success either. This time we did make it to the beach, but there were no seals, only pelicans. We later heard from the Airbnb owner that the seals only come there to have their pups earlier in the spring, and then move on again. There are more great white sharks around the beach then, because they come there looking for easy food. This is when local surfers have to be careful not to accidentally become shark food themselves.
We went back to the campervan to pack for the next day’s flight. We managed to cram four backpacks into three, saving the cost of one piece of luggage. Our United Airlines tickets to Hawaii didn’t include any checked in luggage, and each bag had to be paid for separately.
One of the owners, Nan, had also returned home from work, and we stayed to chat with her in the courtyard. She told us that the faint smell of marijuana wafting through the area was indeed marijuana. A couple of years ago, its cultivation was legalised, and immediately some of the flower farms in the area switched to growing marijuana. It was apparently very profitable at first, but with all the taxes and fees involved, legal cultivation is no longer very profitable. The most amusing thing to us was the fee that growers pay to local schools. When marijuana cultivation started in Carpinteria, one of the conditions was that growers had to support local schools with a certain monthly amount of their drug money. At the same time, however, schools lecture about the harmful effects of drugs. A bit of an odd combination!
In the evening, the children went to the main house to see if they could get a plaster for Risto’s hands. The young man had practised lassoing so hard that his palms had big blisters. We adults stayed in the caravan to sit around, because we were going to roast marshmallows again. However, time passed and the kids hadn’t come back. For a moment we wondered if they had gone knocking on the right door, but then after twenty minutes the children finally came running back carrying a small bag of chocolates. It turned out that the children had stayed to chat with the owners of the place. The children had told them that we were roasting marshmallows again. Nan had dug out some chocolate from the cupboard and instructed the kids on how to make a proper S’more treat. First, a piece of chocolate is put on top of a cookie, and then it is topped with a roasted marshmallow. We should have put another cookie on top, but since we were so short on cookies, we ate the S’mores with one cookie. They were good either way!
In addition to the recipe, the children got to play with the owners’ dogs in the house. One of the dogs, Birdie, is said to be very shy and hardly ever approaches strangers, but just like that, the doggy had parked his butt next to Risto, begging for a scratch. When the kids finally left the owners to spend the evening in peace, they received many many hugs on their way out. For the marshmallow roast, we were joined again by Miss Lucy the cat, who took turns cuddling in each child’s lap.
Before going to bed, Marko decided to take a shower. This shower episode, or rather going there, caused a terrible laughing fit, at least for us adults. It turned out that the small hatch in the net door of the caravan was strategically placed in the right (or, in the children’s opinion, wrong) place. Of course, we had to take a photo of the situation, which caused great annoyance, especially in Ronja. I was told that under no circumstances were the photos with the hatch open to be published on the blog.
In the morning, Miss Lucy joined us again for breakfast. Since we had received a message from United during the night that our flight would be delayed by a couple of hours, we were in no hurry to leave in the morning. The kids had time to feed the horses again, and practice the last few lasso throws. In the morning, Birdie the dog came to Ronja, and asked her to throw a ball for him. This too was very rare. Apparently both our children are somehow easily approachable by animals.
The drive from Carpinteria went almost as expected. It wasn’t until just outside Los Angeles that the traffic got worse, and we arrived at the rental car agency only 30min later than we had anticipated. Of course, this was only a good thing for Marko, who was beginning to feel a bit of separation anxiety from his BMW baby. When our car was finally handed over to its original owner, Sixt car rental, we took their shuttle bus to the airport. There we did our best to pass the time, as we were now there well before our flight left. United flights departed from Terminal 7, which was not very large. Fortunately, there was a place to eat there, where we had a bite to eat before our departure.
Don't go, you can't leave me."
Eventually we took off four hours late. Apparently the flight was overbooked, and that caused a bit of a hassle. Some people were already sitting on their seats, but then they were told to get out of the plane and other people came in. Strange. The only consolation of being so late was that we got to see a beautiful sunset from the plane just before we landed to Honolulu.
