Whale watching from our "back yard"

May gray and on shore winds (blows on shore from the ocean) have given way to a heat wave with off shore winds. Bottom line is the sun is out again! Time to head to the beach....so after a few hours of sleep on Sat Dale woke me up early and off we went!! We have a great time watching everyone on the beach, today (Sun) we watched a couple of young boys play for hours in the waves with a ball, talk about a workout! Ignore this picture - Dale had a great time watching dolphins while I was at work a couple of times. (It really is a nice picture)
Now back to Sat - We were just settling in to read a bit on the beach when I saw a large splash out of the corner of my eye. It didn't take long to see we were watching a whale play (some of the pictures look like we may have seen 2 whales playng) . When Aaron and James were here we paid money to watch whales feed for a couple of hours and we thought that was wonderful. This (or these) whale(s) were having a grand time playing, they "breeched" or came out of the water several times. We think they looked like the humpbacks we saw on our whale watching trip. WOW! One of the nurses at work said they like to scratch the barnacles off their skin in the kelp beds.
Sunset - Peace - Good Night

May Gray

We've sent a lot of pictures of the "nice" side of Santa Barbara, so thought you'd like to see the gloomy. The marine layer rolls in in May and June (June gloom), creating cloudy days and foggy nights. Now mind you it won't be every day, but many of them, and July and August are usually much nicer. This week Wed, Thurs and Fri are supposed to be nice - guess what I work those days! Doesn't seem fair, ah well the good with the not so good. Hopefully it will clear up tomorrow in time for sunset. Of course that really does not matter, because we will be at the James Joyce having a good time.

Wine country 2008

Every year we're in California we go north - to go to church in San Rafael - our first California church - and to tour a part of the "wine country" I know its strange to start with a sunset, but this was from our first night in the area. We drove out to the Marin headlands, right across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The last 2 years the view has been cloudy and foggy, but this year was beautiful. San Francisco is just to the left of the above picture.
The Golden Gate Bridge at night. In the picture above the lights just above the horizon are airplanes waiting to land, we've never seen this view without the planes. The Golden Gate Bridge and the giant redwoods are 2 of our most memorable times from being "up north."
On Sunday after church and a visit to the San Rafael farmer's market, to buy olive oil and bread, we went on to a beer, chili, and salsa competition. The pictures weren't great from the festivities, but we had a really fun time - what could be bad about chili, salsa and beer. But without pictures we must move on to wine country. One of our stops was the Sterling winery, only the darned place was up a mountain and we needed to take a tram up (not my favorite way to travel). The wine was good and the views were very nice so I tolerated the ride, certainly they have roads that go up that mountain.
A wine maker with a sense of humor. This statue, sunglasses inculded, is found outside the Jacuzzi family winery and the Olive Press store. Really good olive oil, I'm sure we bought some, along with a bottle of wine!
We stopped at the August winery because they offered free tastings, and it ended up being one of our best tastings. Its a small winery with a loyal group of members, who buy much of the wine they make. We really liked the wine here. Shortly after this stop Dale said he's had enough wine for one day, but that's not why his eyes are closed. They took 2 pictures of us - the other one Dale's eyes were totally closed, this pic he just looks like he's having a really good time. This winery also makes the Jeff Gordon wine label (he has nothing to do with the process, just the finances). We went to one more winery - where I got to drink most of the wine and stopped to eat at a microbrewery - Dale had Diet Coke, he truly was done for the day. I am happy to report that he has since regained his taste for wine and is happily enjoying some as I write this.

Colten here's one for you!

Colten,

How is school going? Are you ready to read us a story?

We found these things on the beach, Aaron knew what they were but Dale and I did not. Do you?

See you in about a month.

Dale and Beth

American Riveria

I've already posted a picture of the view from "The American Riveria," but wanted to add a little information re: fire season. There were signs posted along the way pointing the way to evacuation routes and announcing an evacuation drill. Looking at the mountain with the houses stacked one on another and a lot of drying vegetation it was easy to see how a wild fire could be lethal around that area. The grasses around Carpinteria are still green, but there were a lot of brown areas higher up the mountain.

C'est Cheese

Lest you think we've been sitting in our chairs since Aaron and James were here I thought I'd better get a few more posts entered. The Monday after they left we went to a little cheese shop in Santa Barbara for a glass of wine and a cheese tasting. Try to imagine about 30 people with chairs and tables in this little shop, it was fun even if crowded. The owners had gone on a cheese buying trip to Italy and had a lot of information about the cheeses and some good stories to go along with the tasting. The cheeses were all very good except for the "stinky" sample. I could eat it, but would not pay money for a bigger piece. There are a couple of the cheeses we plan to buy, but they have been popular and we need to get there on a day the shipments are new to catch them in stock.

Venice and Santa Monica Beaches

Venice beach, what a collection of people, from the muscle beach to the beggars to the nice ocean views. One man was dressed in green and begging for money to buy marijuana (4-20 was marijuana day). Another man had a sign that proclaimed him to be the world's best wino. He sang a new version of Jingle Bells over and over. "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells help be get drunk" It takes all kinds
The Santa Monica pier, just after sunset. We were tired and needed to head to the airport to drop off Aaron and James so we didn't wait for the lights to come on.
Sunset on a wonderful week. We still bring up things we should have done while the boys were here, but would have needed a month to do them all! We really enjoyed having Aaron and James visit us.

Disneyland

Thurs April 25 was spent all day at Disney. Dale and I bowed out for an afternnon siesta, but the boys went all day, except for a break at dinnertime. Above is the castle at night and below during the day. We waited until 9:30 PM for the fireworks, which were then cancelled due to wind. Oh well, we stayed at a hotel close enough to walk which saved us from dealing with traffic.

Mickey Mouse rice krispie treats yum!
Dale and Aaron try to drive off in Roger Rabbit's car. Actually they had a very short stay in the car - lots of little kids waiting in line for a ride.
Austin this one's for you!!!!

Hollywood and Rodeo Drive

Ahh the famous Hollywood sign. I believe this was taken from The Kodak theater. Then we drove up Mulholland Drive and took more pictures of the same sign. There were also good views of the Hollywood Bowl and downtown LA
Everytime the Travel channel or Food Network has a special on hot dogs they mention Pinks. I've always wanted to go there, so this trip we ventured further into Hollywood and ate hot dogs at Pinks. The hot dogs were ok and the didn't get Dale's or my order correct, but it is a historic landmark. In this area of Hollywook street parking ends at 4 PM to try and "relieve gridlock" in that area of the city. So we needed to get a space in the tiny Pink's parking lot. Aaron stood in a spot a man with a Ferrari had hoped to get - so our mini van was able to slide right in.
Then there was Rodeo Drive. We walked into the Dolce and Gabanna store, but had to leave because I was laughing so hard. Men's underwear for $186 and a speedo like swim suit for almost $600. Ah well, most of the people on the streets were tourists like us, but a few were serious shoppers. We did see a couple of Rolls Royces one with a driver and female in the back. There were also other high end cars - Bently, Aston Martin, Ferrari, etc. Below is a picture of the 4 of us on Via Rodeo. But for all the time spent on Rodeeo drive we never saw one horse (so says Aaron)!

Downtown SB and the Court House

The rest of Wed was spent walking down town, eating gelato, and climbing to the top of the court house (really we took an elevator most of the way to the top). I didn't take any pictures, but after looking out over the "American Riveria" Dale and I decided to take a drive. Both of these pictures are from that drive, the views were very nice sorry we didn't do this whlie Aaron and James were here.

Whale watching

Wed 4/23 we went whale watching, above is a picture of the harbor as we were leaving. Below are some pictures of humback whales. They were all interested in feeding so none jumped out of the water or anything else real exciting. But, it was just fascinating to watch them come up for air (they generally stay down 3-7 min) blow the water out of their air holes, do some shallow dives and then flip thier tail fins at us and disappear for another 3-7 min. Aaron and James have some better pictures (we need to get together when we get home and swap some pics)