Santa Barbara '17 - Packing a Lot in at the End

Third Weekend

Yes, we did!  On the third weekend of the festival, we managed to catch three more films, for free.  Have we seen enough movies to last us a while?  Well,  no.  There are a lot of Academy Award winners and nominees that we haven't seen yet.  And the Twin Cities International Film Festival is just around the corner!

 Deluge

No sooner had I published my last sunny entry than the rains returned, big time.  On Friday, the 16th, the Central Coast had a deluge.  The Santa Barbara airport was closed because the runway was under six inches of water.  Cachuma Lake, Santa Barbara's reservoir, received seven and a half inches.  In my last post, I noted that it was at only 20% capacity; this latest storm raised the level to 40%!  Some city streets were flowing streams, closed to traffic.  I brewed some tea and settled in with my crime novel and Carol went to the downtown library for a free showing of the movie, Arrival.  (With that, she tied me with eleven movies seen in Santa Barbara.)  We met downtown later for a chai latté at Starbucks.

On Thursday, before the rains returned, we took Rowdie on a trail hike toward Rattlesnake Canyon.  Our old friend is shaky on her legs when she gets off pavement, but she did a good job.  She crossed a stream on slippery rocks (with a little help from her friends).  At the end, she scaled some boulders to avoid the stream (again with one of us pulling her front end and one one pushing her tail end).

(To fully appreciate the photos, click on them to enlarge them to screen size.)

One tough dog with one tough woman (photo taken by one tough photographer).

 

Rattlesnake Canyon

A Few Words About Santa Barbara Bus Drivers

Santa Barbara bus drivers are almost unfailingly friendly.  If they don't greet you first, they perk up when we greet them.  Almost always there is a brief conversation.  The other evening, our driver on the #11 asked if we were going downtown to listen to jazz.  We said we were heading the the Art Museum, free on Thursday evenings.  Then we chatted about where to hear good music.

The drivers are also somewhat laid back about their actual job.  I asked the driver if Anapamu St. was the bus stop closest to the museum.  She seemed puzzled and said something like "On State Street?"  I said that I thought the #11 turned at Micheltorema and went downtown on Anacapa.  She paused a moment and then said, "Oh, yeah.  Sometimes I forget which route I'm driving.  I thought this was the #2."  We were approaching Micheltorema, and I wondered if she would have continued on State Street had I not asked the question.

After our Starbucks rendezvous, we boarded a #3 at the downtown transit hub.  Two drivers were at the front talking about things that bus drivers talk about when they have five minutes to kill.  The #3 is one we don't usually take, and we asked if it stopped at both Islay St. and Mission St.  They then had a spirited discussion about where this bus stopped.  They finally came to agreement when Carol and I said we were pretty sure that it stopped at both and we were just checking.

Then they got off the bus and wandered away when the actual #3 driver showed up.  He was a talker!  All the way to Islay St. we talked about driving conditions.  It was the day of the deluge and traffic was a mess.  He said, "This is nothing.  I've driven a bus over the Sierras in a snowstorm with chains on the bus."  We traded stories about driving over Donner Pass in the snow.  He gave a thorough description of the challenge of getting chains on bus tires and we commiserated with our own snow chain story.  (Anybody want an unused set of tire chains at a good price?)  Our driver, who was becoming our new pal, finished  by noting that driving in the mountains in the snow was not as bad as driving the bus route to LAX airport.  Our pal had been around.  "So Santa Barbara is like Bus Drivers' Heaven, I asked.  He agreed.

The #11 and #6 were a reliable link to downtown.

Can we talk...?  About tempeh?  And soy ice cream?   

I'm not a vegetarian, but I'm not anti-vegetarian either.  I think that serious vegetarian cooks must be creative to make vegetables interesting and tasteful.  So when Carol suggested lunch at Mesa Verde, a casual vegetarian café, I was eager to go.  Oh my!  We had one of the best meals we've had in California this year, and it was just lunch.  When the waiter asked if we had any questions, I had to ask him what half the ingredients in my flatbread were.  Then I cleaned my plate and washed it down with a good organic pinot gris.  Tempeh bacon?  No, carnivores, it's not real bacon.  But such a delicious accent!

The owner sauntered over to our table after we had asked for the check and asked if we had any food allergies.  When we said no, he said we must try the "best baklava in the world," on the house.  It came with soy ice cream.  I admit that I may have in my past looked down on soy ice cream, but this was delicious!  And the baklava?  It's hard to prove his boast, but I think it would be harder to challenge it.  I would hurry back for more.

"Best Baklava in the World"

 A Touch of Crazy

The Hermitage Museum, shaped like a pile of books

That's the title of Theodore Roosevelt Gardiner's autobiography.  Gardiner is a recluse who lives on ten acres of land he calls The Hermitage, nestled in the hills overlooking Santa Barbara.  The ten acres include the above museum, a botanical garden and a sculpture garden.  "Whimsy abounds," proclaims the brochure.  "Nothing is to be taken too seriously."  Tours are rare and generally unadvertised, and the waiting list is long.

Dave Stockdale and Jan Search arrived from the Twin Cities for a visit.  Dave had been determined to take this tour since he learned about it on their visit two years ago.  Through a dazzling display of determination, Dave got the four of us on a tour while they were in town this year.  The Hermitage is truly a place where a photo is worth ten thousand words.  Jan and I had a field day with our cameras.  Here are a few of the results.  Check out the Hermitage website link for more photos.

Bookworm

Damsel in Distress?

I want this fence for our back yard.

Dave, Jan and friend on the grounds of the Hermitage

Where's Marco?

Jan and I agreed, when our tour was over, that we'd like to spend a week at the Hermitage, the first three days or so to just wander the grounds and the museum and absorb it all, and the rest of the time at work with our cameras.

We got in as much hiking as we could with Jan and Dave, and had a pretty good time of it.  We also had a fine dinner at Toma's in downtown Santa Barbara, a restaurant not to be missed.

Winter Respite Drawing to a Close

We delivered Jan and Dave to the airport Saturday morning and spent a quiet day resting from all the excitement of visitors.  Our last couple days have been low key.  The Santa Barbara Music Club offered a free afternoon concert at the downtown library in the afternoon featuring piano and cello pieces.  Our last two days are divided between packing and getting out on the trails one or two more times.  I'll wrap up with a few more photos from around town and around the trails.

Looking up - Forest Canopy, Tequepis Trail

Looking down - On the Tequepis Trail

The Pigs of Montecito

Spontaneous Shadow Art at the Santa Barbara Art Museum

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Watch your step!

At odds

That's it for our Winter Adventure 2017.  We hit the road on Wednesday, the 1st.  We hope you are all well.  May your journeys be safe and full of wonder and your lives full.

P.S.  Now, scroll back up three photos, to the photo of the building with the clock.  Did you notice an unusual detail?  I was so intent on lighting and composition, I missed it until I was editing photos.  Be honest.  Did you miss it the first time?