Sometimes it’s nice to get out of LA, and drive to a land where the cars aren’t stacked bumper to bumper. This weekend we headed up Rt. 1 to Santa Barbara, here is our photo journey.

Malibu High School.. constantly reminding their students not to cut class to head to the beach.

Ojai, zen-like town (?) we saw nice hills and good restaurants, but decided to truck on to Santa Barbara.

Driving in the Ojai Valley is pretty crazy, you have to navigate up these long winding mountains, and there are cyclists that for some reason trust that drivers won’t plow into them and throw them off the mountain. Those people shouldn’t ride next to me.

By the time we got to Santa Barbara we were in such need of magaritaization that we pulled off three blocks before our hotel and downed a bean and cheese burrito and veggie fajita. The margaritas were pretty sugary and we didn’t taste much alcohol, but we’d take care of that later.

The West Beach Inn is in a great location, they don’t show you many photos of it online, perhaps to hide the fact that it’s not a high-rise resort? All of the inn’s on the coast are pretty much the same, and all located close to the water and to State Street.

That night we headed down State Street to Palazzio, which I didn’t take photos of for some reason.. but we had some great EOS Cabernet Sauvignon, and pasta. They tell you to only order the half serving because it’s a lot, and it is, dang. Great food, even though the girl puked later that night because of all the oil (we think.)

The next morning we got up and walked all around the habor, very peaceful, random crab sitings, scoping out beach bars.

Here’s Tom and Katie’s hotel:

We walked through this tunnel under the 101 maybe 3 times a day, always someone sketchy under there.

Taking the train to Santa Barbara is an option if you’re planning on just hanging out in the area.

We had bigger plans.. we headed up to Santa Ynez/wine country. Here we are coming up to Lake Cachuma. We saw that you had to pay admission to drive into the park, but we also noticed that there was a 15 minute parking spot. We parked the car and walked toward the water but the front gate guy said “we can’t just have people walking in” and I said “we parked over there, we’re just going to take a picture of the water” or something like that, and he said “that’s 15 minute parking, you can’t see anything in 15 minutes.” But we could already see the lake. So this toolbag tore us away from nature.

This biznatch below cut us off on the right at a 2 lane merge on one of these roads. Feel free to post this photo all over the net, or Santa Barbara Craigslist.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear, Slovang! We spent an hour or so at this little Copenhagenesque town just north of Santa Barbara

We hit our first wine tasting here, and the girl treated at Mortensen’s Danish Bakery. We had the cream puff and rum ball which pretty much satisfied our sweet craving for a year.

Then off to Buellton, wine country and location of the movie Sideways.

Our favorite was the Kalyra Winery, (where they meet Sandra Oh in the movie) it was really social, and we sampled 6 or 7 wines.

We took a right out of the Kalyra Winery parking lot and ended up in the middle of nowhere country.

Fearing that we were going to miss our wine and cheese happy hour at the hotel, we stopped by this California something grocery store and stocked up on cheese, crackers, and locally made hummus, which is light years beyond regular hummus.

Here’s the snark, the Gainey Vineyard sucks. Lotsa guidos hanging out with streched limos, and the staff, eh.

Back to the harbor

Before heading back to LA, we HAD to stop by Mad Dog’s on State Street for the Vegan Sausage, which was super f’n good.

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