300 extra miles, the hard way.

Well, we're back from our anniversary trip (happy anniversary, honey!) which was fun, but in an ordeal kind of way. That's because the template for this trip was set when the historian and I ran down to San Bernardino-ish for running son's race in December. It was surprisingly not an ordeal--we drove just to Cedar City late on a Thursday, to Walnut the next day, which took us only till about 2 p.m., and without any kind of unearthly early wakeup, I might add. That gave us the afternoon and evening in Walnut, the morning at the race, half the afternoon poking around Claremont and environs, a drive to St. George, and an easy drive back home on Sunday. It was so fun!

So we decided that a SoCal trip through the hi-des (I saw this as a bumper sticker) would be cool, but that this time we'd go to the coast. It was only about 150 more miles each way. The plan was, we'd drive through the area of the high desert where I spent some growing up years (Edwards AFB), which seemed cool, then down through a mountain valley to Ventura and up the 101 just 30 miles from there to Santa Barbara.

Okay, but it turned out that those 150 miles were slow miles. There were some fast parts through the mountains, but some slow parts in the desert, which made the trip feel laden with anxiety for an already anxious person. (Hint: I'm not talking about the historian.)

Still:















ring of fire in the Whiskey Pete's swimming pool















miles outside of sin city
















palm shadows in the pool















pier















Santa Barbara evening sky















evening sky 2










orange grove (we bought a box of just-picked oranges)
















blizzard-ish in Utah on the way home