Ventura to Santa Barbara

Summer Solstice Parade, Santa Barbara, California

Thirty miles is not enough distance between stops, unless that's how far it is to Santa Barbara and lunch is calling. Another of Father Junipero Serra's mission towns (the mission was founded two years after his death), Santa Barbara is famous for its Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and burgeoning wine industry.

The architecture resulted from reforms introduced when rebuilding the city after a June 1925 earthquake. The wine came later.

Although grapes have been a part of the landscape since the time of Serra, modern winemaking didn't begin until 1962. The industry took off in the 1990s and received an additional boost from the 2004 movie Sideways, which chronicles the misadventures of a lost soul from San Diego and his old college buddy, who spend their days stumbling about area wineries.

We are not lost, we are just having trouble finding State Street. The main artery of Santa Barbara eludes us as we zig-zag along tree-laden, one-way avenues, admiring red tile roofs.

An easier way is to ride the Pacific Surfliner here, eat lunch at one of the beachside cafes, and then return home. It takes all day, but as a friend once noted, Telegraph Brewing Company is less than a mile walk from the Amtrak station. What's the hurry?

If you catch the 6:43 train from Solana Beach north of San Diego, you'll be in Santa Barbara by noon. Take the 4:35 train back, and you're home by 10 p.m. Spring a little extra for business class to get a seat upstairs, extra leg room, and free snacks.

But that's a different trip. Now we are driving. After several near misses, we turn a corner and see the wall of people that is State Street. It is closed to traffic because today is the summer solstice and there is a parade. I hate a parade.

Coming to see this is no more a part of the plan than is stopping for salads at D'Vine, but life is full of happy accidents (“Buenaventura”) and here we are. Sandra orders the ahi–perfectly seared, raw in the middle–while I enjoy the more thoroughly cooked but equally delicious grilled salmon.

The parade happens. This is a college town near the beach. Spectators show off tattoos, piercings, and crazy hair. They wear Dead Milkmen and Evil Dead T-shirts. They are beautiful, smiling and laughing and clapping their hands as motorless floats pass.

Participants are no less beautiful. There are roller skaters, pirates, and mermaids. There are giant cartoon animals: A penguin, a pig, a flamingo, an owl that turns its head 360 degrees. There are Brazilian drummers, dancing girls with pink headdresses, marching bands. Who could hate this?

Our tight schedule means we must leave too soon. The street behind us remains in a state of organized chaos, music blaring, people cheering and laughing. The bustle distracts us and it isn't until we are back on US-101, maybe 20 miles north, that we realize we have forgotten something important: Dessert.

San Diego to Ventura

Harbor Cove Beach, Ventura, California

Leaving San Diego at 6:09 a.m. would be a curious detail to remember if not for my obsession with documenting everything. Or as Sandra more delicately puts it, “Do your crazy thing.”

The lagoons and houses along I-5 north to Los Angeles have an orderliness about them, a rhythm. The freeway skirts sandy beaches and rolling hills, impressing those not jaded by having driven it hundreds of times.

I barely notice them while plotting ill-advised schemes to avoid the inevitable traffic. Camp Pendleton, whose Marines keep Orange County from spreading into San Diego, buys us a little time. So does a quick stop in San Clemente for a soggy, fast-food-chain breakfast sandwich.

One possibility would be to hang a right at San Juan Capistrano. There, the Ortega Highway transports folks across the Santa Ana Mountains to Lake Elsinore and I-15. It's tempting, but it shoots us toward Las Vegas rather than California's central coast. How bad could traffic be?

* * *

Today it is slow but moving. This isn't like trying to get from Azusa to Culver City during the LA Marathon when I-10 is closed. There is no 3-hour slog through the streets of South Central. But that was 20 years ago, let it go already.

This morning the city is a relative blur en route to Ventura, an hour to the northwest. Incorporated in 1866, its full name is San Buenaventura, after 13th-century theologian and philosopher Giovanni di Fidanza–better known to history as Saint Bonaventure.

The pedestrian-friendly downtown, which features a variety of boutique shops, would be an ideal spot to stretch our legs if not for a wrong turn that sends us toward the ocean. Signs for Channel Islands National Park look promising (“Buenaventura” literally translates to “good fortune”), so we follow them past another armada of shops to Harbor Cove Beach.

There is no time to catch a boat out to the actual islands, only for a stroll along the still-sleepy beach. High wispy clouds punctuate a crisp blue sky. A few surfers, birds, and dogs dot the land.

One man catches clams or crabs. Another, a fisherman, is assaulted by a kid running naked in the sand. The fisherman quickly spots the kid's laughing parents, then returns to his business, occasionally tossing scraps of fish to hovering seagulls.

The breezy salt air and endless blue on the horizon are hypnotic. It feels like we could stay forever. If you'd have said we'd leave after 90 minutes to go watch a parade, I'd have called you nuts. But I'm just the driver, what do I know?