Los Angeles to Santa Barbara sounds like a West Coast sort of trip and there are colleges to visit on both ends. Sunday morning took us to the campus of the University of California – Los Angeles. Cool, I have wanted to visit since I was thinking about college. Since we were already expecting to be on our own, we found parking and began wandering around. UCLA is bigger than ASU and much bigger than Fort Lewis.
After UCLA we took a little trip over to Pepperdine in Malibu. We didn’t really tour the campus, but we did drive around the loop and
they have a beautiful campus with an amazing view of the ocean. Visiting Pepperdine set us up nicely for visiting the Getty Villa. Dee and the girls liked it better than I did and I rather liked it. I was probably still in a testy mood from negotiating that parking lot that Californians call Highway 1 or the Pacific Coast Highway. I should have learned then that Highway 1 would let you down.
Avoiding Highway 1 near Los Angeles was on my mind heading for Santa Barbara.We went into the hills from Malibu until we could join US101. Santa Barbara is a beach town too so it’s impossible to stay away from ‘The One’ altogether, but we were in good shape because
we were further from Los Angeles. We actually had a place to stay in Carpenteria, the city east of Santa Barbara. The hotels we stayed at were mostly just nice, but I liked this one particularly well since it had an enclosed courtyard and a balcony that we enjoyed while drinking our morning coffee. That’s jumping the gun though, on Sunday evening we dumped our bags in our rooms and took the girls to the beach in Carpenteria. We took Linden Avenue until it ended in a parking lot and walked a few yards to the sand. The girls looked left and right and said goodbye so Dee and I were on our own. We hollered that they should call us when they were hungry and we went to The Palms for dinner. It’s a bit unusual in that you cook your own meat. We were almost done when the girls called, so by the time they walked the couple blocks from the beach, we were ready to go across the street to the grocery store . Chris was tired of ‘Gringo Food’ (whatever that is) and wanted to make some Guacamole dip for dinner for herself and Katy. It was more than Avocado. I had a taste the next morning and this gringo would happily call it food!