Santa Barbara, CA

After a week of camping it was nice to stop at Daniel's grandparents home in Santa Barbara, CA where we could shower, rest and just be tourists. One day we spent taking a little tour of downtown Santa Barbara. We went to the courthouse and we were able to lookout from the top over it city. It was a beautiful view. We walked all over and saw a lot of little historical sites and learned some random tidbits about the city.

We met up with family later that day for lunch. It was so fun to have Daniel's uncle Daniel and his wife Chris in town. They brought their five kids for a high school reunion so we were glad to spend some time with them.
After lunch Daniel and I went down to a park on the Shoreline. We were going to walk up to the wharf which was quite a ways away. While walking through the park we saw some stairs that would take us down to the water. We headed down and wondered if we would be able to make it to the beach portion of the walk where we were already headed running along the water. The only problem was we were right next to a cliff and the water was fairly high. We decided we would go for it anyways. We would wait for the water to go down before we ran around the cliffs that jutted out. We made it a good way down without getting too wet when we set out running around a cliff and found that there was no higher ground on the other side. It was too late to go back or forward and we were stuck. We got drenched past our knees. Since we didn't know how far we had to go we turned around and headed back up the stairs on our normal path. We made it to the wharf and I was exhausted. We decided to get an ice cream treat and relax before we headed back. The water was so beautiful and it was just a nice walk along the beach.
Another day came and we decided to go to the Zoo. It was a really nice Zoo and it was fun to see some bigger animals. One thing that I found out on this vacation was it was nice to be just the two of us on occasions like this because we really just sat and enjoyed whatever we wanted to for however long we wanted to. I feel like in the future we will not be able to do that as often. We were able to watch the elephants getting a bath and the monkeys who would every once in a while swing from tree to tree. We went all the way through the zoo and then hit all the exciting animals again and just took our time to enjoy everything.

Another day we were just hanging out with Mitzi and Grandpa and we decided to go to In and Out for some delicious burgers and shakes. Then we headed to Solvang for some aebleskivers. We decided to go back to the park on the beach and walk along the cliffs because I just fell in love with the beach while we were there.
One of the best days was the day we were able to take a trip down to Thousand Oaks, the place that Daniel grew up. He showed me his old house, school, church, soccer fields and all his old stomping grounds. We went up to the Reagan Presidential Library which was very interesting and just beautiful. We had lunch at one of Daniels favorite local places. Then we went to the beach and played in the waves. I do not think I have ever been to the beach and really gotten in the water so Daniel had to teach me how to catch the waves and not just get swept away and thrown into the shore (which happened lots too). We stayed in the water until we were exhausted.
It was such a great week in Santa Barbara. We enjoyed doing lots of things out on our own but we also enjoyed nights in with Mitzi and Grandpa. We played a question game every night and learned a lot about each other. That time was precious and we were thankful for the opportunity to have it.