Thursday, July 15: Wine Country and Santa Barbara

We went into uncharted territory for all of us today up to Santa Barbara County to do a little wine tasting. We went to Gainey first and had a tour of their winery. The kids saw the grapes and wanted to try them....you can tell by the expression on their faces that they were still a little sour!

Of course, Hannah didn't think they were all that bad tasting, so I'm guessing we're going to have a little wine drinker in her someday. We ate our picnic lunch on their lawns and enjoyed the view. We headed to one of the other 614 wineries in that county (we told the kids we were going to visit ALL of them!) called Bridlewood. We paid our $10 fee (which I guess is pretty standard) and we got a souvenir wine glass and got to sample about 6 to 8 of their wines starting at white and moving to reds. They were all really good and it was a nice experience.

We changed into our swimsuits and headed back through the beautiful countryside and mountains to Santa Barbara. We owed the kids a beach and we delivered a scenic but kinda smelly beach. Mark was impressed that you could see ocean, palm trees and mountains all at once. Here is a view of the sidewalk/boardwalk that runs along the beach. Lots of bikers and rollerbladers and walkers use this path.

For some reason, there has been a lot of kelp on the beaches the entire time we've been here and it kinda smells bad and attracts flies when it lands on the sand. Not very pleasant.

But the kids had fun, digging in the sand and making sand castles. Jacob is always on the hunt for a sand dollar (he looked for one in the rivers in Arizona too!) but they don't seem to have a lot of shells here on the beaches. This beach had some smooth rocks scattered about, but that's about it. We saw a hippie van in the parking lot. I think the owners were asking for donations if you took a picture of yourself with it. I imagine they make a small fortune each day.