Santa Barbara downtown and trolley tour

We arrived in the Ocean Mesa RV resort in El Capitan (about 20 mins north of Santa Barbara) on Monday afternoon. The weather was super nice, so even though it was getting a bit late after settling in, Vince and I decided to drive down to Santa Barbara to begin our exploration. (We usually end up not doing much on "moving day" because it's a full day of packing, driving, unpacking, and soothing the terrified kitties.) We walked around on State Street and went down all the way to the Stearns Wharf. There we spent some time reading all the tourist plaques to learn more about the beach and the wharf, and then we watched the many fishermen fishing for mackerels. We saw a guy catch five at a time! Another guy in a boat caught two halibuts and was super excited, and he should be--those fish cost $25 a pound! The funny thing about the Santa Barbara coast is that it faces the south rather than the west, so we caught the beautiful sunset at the beach, but it wasn't over the water. 😛

The next day we went back downtown to take the trolley tour, which departs every hour on the hour from 10am to 3pm. It stops by many of the famous destinations in Santa Barbara, with the driver giving brief introductions of each. The idea is to give the tourists a bit of information on each stop so that they can go back to visit it further if they're interested. The most memorable factoids for us were 1. the fact that The Coral Casino Beach and Cabana Club costs an initiation fee of $300,000(!), 2. the fact that the reclusive heiress Huguette Clark of the Clark Estate spent the last 20 years of her life living in a hospital voluntarily, leaving many of her expensive mansions empty (when she passed away, she left behind $300M!), and 3. while Santa Barbara enjoys about 300 days of sunshine a year, it's typical to have a cold fog covering the area around this time of year--that's why it's quite cold today--"May gray, June gloom", he said.

When the trolley tour finished, we came upon the farmers market on State Street, so of course we had to go. Wow! We tasted and bought so many super yummy fruits! We also found these "Gaviota strawberries" that tasted so much like the type that we loved grown by Vince's parents' neighbor farmer! We binged on them right on the street after we bought a bunch. 😝

For dinner we went to Arigato Sushi recommended by our neighbor, who's a Santa Barbara native. It was super good! The seafood was top notch and the creative items were really tasty as well. We wished our stomach could actually fit more. According to the trolley driver/ guide, there are more than 400 restaurants in Santa Barbara, and according to Yelp, there are a ton of good ones! Three and a half days is definitely not going to be enough time for us (we have to make it to LA for Mother's Day weekend)--we'll have to come back!

A drone shot of our current RV park. Our RV is in the bottom left corner.

Nice warm glow of the setting sun on Stearns Wharf.

A fisherman who caught 5 mackerels at once.

The lucky guy who caught 2 halibuts.

Selfie with a seagull. He was not at all afraid of human.

The trolley tour

The Santa Barbara Mission. We need to come back here.

Beautiful flowers at the farmers market.

The Great American Melodrama & Vaudeville

On our way from the RV park to the beaches, we always pass by an interesting-looking building. We looked it up last night, and it's the building for The Great American Melodrama & Vaudeville. Since it was projected to rain today, we decided to book a ticket for their 6pm show of A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court (based on Mark Twain novel of the same name) tonight.

Boy, what a treat! It was super fun and funny. The synopsis of the play from their website reads

After a bump on the head, Hank Morgan awakens to find himself in the days of Camelot. Because of his knowledge of modern technology everyone is convinced that he’s a magician. Soon King Arthur puts him in charge of industrializing the kingdom. It’s a madcap adventure with knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. Don’t miss this world premiere adaptation of an American classic.

The entire show was energetic and Vince and I laughed throughout.

After the two-act play, there was a elementary-school-kids-themed vaudeville revue. The songs were awesome and the satires pertinent.

We fully enjoyed ourselves. 😊

Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area

On Thursday we moved further down California to Pismo Beach. For the first time we’re actually far away enough from home that it starts to feel real! 🙀

One of the most popular things to do in Pismo Beach is to visit the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, which is a stretch of beach/ sand dunes area in which visitors may drive their own vehicles. Since this has always been Vince’s dream, and we’re towing a Jeep, of course we had to do it. 😁

Vince read up on how it’s like to drive on sand, so he brought tools to properly deflate the tires for the dunes and to re-inflate them once we’re done. In the beginning Vince was feeling a bit nervous about being stuck, but turns out this Jeep can go all kinds of places, up and down the dunes! It felt like the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland—super fun!

We even managed to rescue a stuck Yukon SUV by towing them out of the soft sands. These kids certainly didn't read up like Vince did; they came with a 2-wheel drive vehicle with road tires. 😏 They were lucky because the rope that they initially borrowed somewhere snapped before they were completely towed out, but fortunately Vince was carrying a snatch strap that Jeep gave us, so we were able to tow them out completely in the end. 😊

Really fun experience! Even if you don't have dunes-appropriate vehicles, you can still rent an ATV or dune buggy by the beach, so definitely recommended!

Vince deflating the tire to be ready for driving on the sand!

Crossing a tiny stream

Getting ready to tow the stuck Yukon out

Point Lobos

On our last day in Marina, we drove down to Big Sur, all to way up to where the road is closed due to the broken Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge. We went to the ranger station and chatted with the ranger. Evidently the Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, which is closed due to the fire, will take until June-ish time frame to re-open, and the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge will take until the end of September to be fixed. We thus decided to have our lunch picnic in the close-by short trail next to the Big Sur River. The trail was very quiet, and the river full of water after the rain, so after our picnic we also took a nice nap next to the babbling water. 

After the nap we decided to drive back up to hike at the Point Lobos Natural Reserve. The ranger mentioned that right now we should still be able to see seal pups on the beach along the trail, so I was eager to go see them. We picked a trail route where we would pass by the seals and the overall loop wouldn't be too long. The trail was beautiful since it was close to the coast most of time. The downside, though, is that the trail was FULL OF POISON OAK!!! Furthermore, the park is trimming all the trails right now in preparation for the upcoming peak season, so many trails were just lined with cut poison oak on the path. Yikes! Hope we properly washed off everything when we got home!

Despite the "unfavorable condition", we finished our loop and got to see many cute seal babies hanging around the beach. We even chanced upon the Whalers Cabin Museum--which we didn't even know existed--and saw some real whale bones and baleen. Pretty cool.

Point Lobos is definitely a cool park to visit, but maybe go during the summer months so the trails are in better shape and the poison oak trimmed back. 😀

The famous Bixby Creek Bridge

On the side of the Big Sur River, where we had our picnic

Views on the trail in Point Lobos Natural Reserve

The playing seal pups (hard to see)

Whale bones...