Blogs from Santa Barbara, California, United States, North America - page 21

Begging, Crying, Pleading.... I have children I need to get home to Yes it is true... No plane out for 9 days!! Ok ... well maybe it was our fault...... but due to a typing error we missed our plane at Salt Lake City. We tried to rush through with only 10 mins to get to our plane.......However if you are a person trying to board a plane at the last minute *this apparently triggers alarm bells in this day and age of increase security* as you could be trying to avoid the long process of checking what you are carrying, so instead of trying to rush through we were STOPPED..... After boarding about 12 planes we get our first frisk search in the small Salt Lake City Airport and they open our luggage and go ... read more

So, we went to LA to pick up my passport, complete with the 3 visas I'll need for my 6 week journey. I'm SO excited! I could barely sleep last night, worried that something would go wrong and I wouldn't be able to get my passport back in time. You know those consulate people, if they don't like one thing about you, say, a crease on the wrong part of a document, they have the power send you back home with your tail between your legs. I kinda expected I would be asked to do a little magic trick and a dance before they'd give me back my passport, but in actuality the whole process took approximately 15 seconds. I was stoked. No more 5 hours driving to LA and back, except to go to LAX ... read more

MARCH 2005 This segment of my life has been deemed “The Summer of Cash & Prizes” (thank you to Jeff Munsey for coining the fabulous phrase!). But frankly the bottom line is….life is short, it should always be summer. Therefore, I quit my “real job” at Sunstone Winery to attempt to take a year off and travel. I don’t really know how many places I will get to, how many frequent flier miles I will log, or how many of you I will really get to see. But I have lofty goals. The purpose of this log is for your entertainment while I attempt to achieve these goals. I can already see that I will not get to nearly all the places that I would like…the money just never goes far enough! However, part of the ... read more

Arriving in Santa Barbara, our first stop was to visit the mission. Mission Santa Barbara, Virgen y Martir was founded on December 4, 1786 (the Feast of St. Barbara) as the tenth of California's twenty-one Spanish colonial missions. As were all of the missions, Santa Barbara was founded to extend Spanish colonization along the Pacific coast and to educate and Christianize the Native American tribes of California. The impressive church one sees today is the fourth constructed at the mission. It was begun in 1815 and completed in 1820. It is unique in several ways. Santa Barbara is the only California mission church with two towers. Its classical facade, attributed to Mexican master stonemason José Ramierez, was based on designs in Vetruvius' book of Roman Architecture. (How that book was known in that time and place ... read more