Day 11: Santa Barbara, CA

Ok, I apologize for not posting last night! I'll explain all that happened...

We got off to a late start to the day not leaving the hotel til around 10 a.m. Then, we went to an urgent care center (called 'Doctors on Duty') to find out what was wrong with my eye and get medicine (it started to get worse overnight). Luckily, the place we went to took Tricare (our insurance) and we sat and waited for about 45 minutes until I was seen by a doctor.

The doctor came in for a 2 WHOLE minutes, looked at my eye, told me it was infected and prescribed me some antibiotic eye drops. We spent another hour and half talking to 8 people on the phone with our insurance and Elmendorf (our base in Alaska) to make sure that we wouldn't have to pay for the visit. It's hard to explain, and it's boring, so basically we were annoyed with talking to so many people who all told us several different things to do. It was frustrating and took up the bulk of our day.


We arrived in Santa Barbara (about a 3 1/2 hour drive) around 4 p.m. and ate late lunch. I wanted to go to Santa Barbara Winery (a winery I visited in 2006) and do a tasting. We made it just in time, a little before 5 p.m. (which is when it closed), to do a tasting. The tasting cost $5 and we got to taste six wines (they actually gave us a free one, and I asked to try two more, so we tried nine). Klay and I tend to sway more toward white wines instead of reds, and we already had bought three white wines, so we were trying to find a red we liked. We ended up buying two red wines at the Syrah and a ZCS.

Then, we walked across the street to do another tasting at Oreana Winery. It was $6 for six wines and was a really cool place! In the photo of Klay and I, we were about to drink the "Eliminator" which has 20% alcohol content. It was a little strong for me, but wasn't too bad.



A block away from Oreana, was another winery, which gave a whopping 11 tastings for $8. Their wines we weren't to crazy about. But we met some friendly folks who suggested some places to stop at in Los Angeles.

Our hotel was right around the corner and I'd already started getting a headache. I thought about blogging, but when Klay got out the computer, we apparently had to pay money for Wifi! I went ahead and went to sleep (although I probably wouldn't have blogged any way; the wine got the best of me). I woke up with a massive migraine, took some medicine, went back to sleep and woke up just peachy (literally no headache or anything)! Needless to say we didn't stop at any more wineries before leaving Santa Barbara.

But Klay and I really had fun and have learned a lot more about wine on our trip!



Stay tuned for more "From the Road..."

Santa Barbara on Dwellable

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Day 8: California & Redwood National Park

Today was a sad day for us. Leaving Oregon, was unexpectedly sad and disappointing. I thought originally we'd be excited to get to California, but Oregon was truly amazing. Our little cabin was so awesome, we didn't leave til checkout time at 11 a.m. We tried to relax and soak it all in.

When we got in the car, Klay told me he had a song for me...Can anyone guess what it was? If you thought "On the road again," you were right on the money! I guess he got tired of singing and decided to let Willie Nelson do it for him--or at least thats what he said.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag3w0MS6wv0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3]



We decided to stop off at one last beach right before the Oregon/California state line.

We ended up spending an hour just walking along the beach with the dogs and picking up white rocks along the shoreline. It was nice and relaxing, and I knew that when leaving the stunning Oregon coast I'd be sad.



We got to California without a hitch and with Oregon behind us, I figured I'd focus on our excitement for Redwood National Park.

We stopped at a Redwoods visitor center to get some more info and directions on nice paths to take, so we'd know exactly where to go. When we got to our first path, our immediate reaction to the redwoods was: "Whoa." Here's why (see the pics!)...

These trees can get up to 361 feet and 25 feet wide (according to Klay; he's the one that remembers). So they really are giants.



Majority of our day we spent driving through the parks gazing at these gigantic beauties. While driving in through the parks, we passed a ton of wild elk.



So the destination for today's trip was for Fort Bragg, CA to spend the night and it was a horrible idea.

By the time we were almost to Fort Bragg it was pitch black and I was driving.

We turned off to Hwy 1 which took us down the curviest, swerviest, ridiculous road ever. It took an hour just to get 30 miles. We were running low on gas (which I was slightly worried about) and I couldn't see anything. I have a tendency to hit deer, or they like to run it to me (that's the way I like to think), so it was crazy scary for me!



But we made it to Fort Bragg just fine. I'd looked up places to stay in that area and found what I THOUGHT was a nice place (it had a spa). Boy, was I wrong! We still stayed, but had a horrible night sleep. Glad to leave in the AM!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dvqLjV6zYg&w=560&h=349]

Stay tuned for more "From the Road..."

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