I finally backed out of my driveway at 10:57 am on Saturday, December 26, 2009. Earlier in the morning I had breakfast with a good friend of mine, loaded up the car, washed the dishes, and made arrangements for my trash and rent payments. As soon as I got on the road, a stream of ideas started flooding my exhilarated brain. Here are a few of them... I realized why I like to travel. You see, traveling is like a new beginning in life. I am not talking about a weekend trip to visit friends. No, I am talking about a [View Full Entry]

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Day 5: We spent the night with Grandma Carole and Jenny. It was really nice to see them and get caught up on what happening in everyone’s lives. As far as our travel there is not a ton to say here. We got up early and had a delicious breakfast at Big Johns in Frazier Park then headed west. We stopped at the Ranger/Fire station to ask about road closures only to find that the major portion of our route was blocked by an obstinate property owner who had put his own locks on the forestry gates, and they couldn’t even [View Full Entry]

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The drive down to Santa Barbara was a better one being that the sun finally started to come out and I realised why we have air con in the car!! Getting to the hostel was great, my first glimpse of what I had always thought of as "California" with palm trees and a proper beach!! The hostel was only 2 blocks away so on arriving we went for a walk around the area. The beach was full of birds, the usual gulls and loads of huge pelican's! The beach itself wasn't the cleanest but was still the nicest one we'd seen [View Full Entry]

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Beautiful and charming place! [View Full Entry]

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Santa Barbara.... home of State Street (most pleasant street ever), Sambos (best breakfast ever), Sandbar (where bad things happen to good people!), and Q's (most precious barman) So we set off to Santa Barbara on our first Greyhound bus - seriously,it was an experience. I've travelled on crazy buses in Mexico and Guatemala and have honestly never been in a confined space with such a collection of strange people! I'm seriously thinking of writing a book about it! Anyway,we arrived at 5am (stupid o'clock) and trotted off down State St towards our hostel (with Iona acting as chief [View Full Entry]

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Gosh, a week has passed since my last blog. This was to be our grandkids vacation week but just before we were to leave on Sunday Dale was told that he would not get any vacation time as there is no other nurse to replace him. We’d already canceled Alaska when his job was iffy at best so flexibility became the key here. We decided to just come to the Santa Barbara area, try a beach first then Cachuma Lake 2nd. Dale drove the Mazda as he had to go back to work for 3 days while I drove the truck [View Full Entry]

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22/07/09 Wednesday Day 342 On arriving here we went to the tourist office to check out our accommodation options again. Your one behind the counter was really pushing this place that was miles away from the beach where we wanted to stay. We ended up staying in Days Inn motel which was only about 2 blocks from the beach. It also turned out cheaper than your one at the tourist office said. It was mid afternoon by the time we checked in so after we got some lunch we headed for the beach for some badly needed sunbathing. We’re getting a [View Full Entry]

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Kids had their 1st day of summer camp: computers, kick ball then swimming in the morning. Afternoon of kayaking, surfing and boggie boarding. We didn’t have much food to send, only a sandwich and water so they were starving after it was over. We went to Trader Joe’s and bought a ton of food for snacks and lunches for the rest of the week. By 8:30pm they were all asleep. Easy week for us. I went back to Bakersfield and picked up Dale after dropping kids off. He has been swamped with his night job, a major pressure cooker these days. [View Full Entry]

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What a long day. We left at 6am for Santa Clarita to work the farmer’s market. We’d baked so many cookies only to find out when we arrived in S.C. that we were not yet approved to sell them. Seems that Nate forgot to tell me that he didn’t get all of the info into the market manager. People actually came and asked for the cookies, one guy was specifically told by his daughter to pick up some. So we gave out cookies as samples building some good will I hope. We came on to Santa Barbara where we will mostly [View Full Entry]

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hoi mitenand... am sunntig simmer vo hollywood richtig santa barbara gfahre.. ufem wäg no bi malibu verbi.. santa barbara isch meega herzig.. nöd z vergliche mit santa monica... viel chliner und heimeliger... ganz viel herzigi lädeli häts ka wo so chli retro sache ka hend... vo chleider über möbel und süsch gägäständ.. me het am obet mega schön chli chöne durs städtli laufe... ganz und gar üsi wellelängi gsi... am mäntig simmer den an besmo beach... da isch noch sata barbara... leider simmer mega entüscht gsi... mir hend gar nöd realisiert dasmor eigentli scho recht nördlich sind... s wasse [View Full Entry]

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