Carpinteria beach - the best beach in Santa Barbara country

I think this rates as the best beach we've seen so far. The water was a perfect 18 degrees celcius, the beach sand was white and not the oily grey that you see on many other beaches from the oil seeps.

Carpinteria state beach 25 October 2009

Fascinating rock formation on Gaviota Beach

We did our usual Sunday drive of discovery and found an unusual beach 20 miles out of Santa Barbara which have rocks which expose very clear perfectly angled rock strata. It also had a wonderful collection of star fish which entertained Samuel and Luke for hours. We wanted to continue our journey on this coastal road all the way to Lompoc but discovered that a large section of this coast consists of privately owned roads - really sad. What you will also find about 20 miles north of the beach we were on is Vanderberg Air Force Base which is the official West coast launch site for Space shuttles. No space shuttles that we know about have been launched from there but I have been told by somebody who went by train past the AFB that he saw a camouflaged full size military space shuttle on the launch pad which is completely off the record.

Gaviota state park October 2009

Passed my Californian drive test

Hooray - just passed my Californian drivers license - the only errors I made were using South African hand turn signals. I'm still getting used to the concept of pedestrians and skateboarders having complete right of way on the road - if they just step into the road you have to screech to a halt. In South Africa, you have to assume every car is out to kill you when you are a pedestrian.

Denmark in the US

We drove up to a place called Solvang today. It was really surreal to walk around a town in the US that feels exactly like Denmark. Some Danish educators settled their around 1911 and decided to preserve every aspect of Danish culture including all the architecture.

From Solvang October 2009