Tag Archives: beach

On the Road Again

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We planned two road trips for this summer. One to Park City, Utah and the other to a tiny town on the California coast called Summerland. I wrote about the Park City trip HERE. On our way to Summerland, we stopped to visit my 90-year-old dad at the halfway point. Then we headed to a Vrbo near the beach.

Beach house near Santa Barbara
We’ll be returning to this beach cottage for the seventh summer.

It’s tough to decide if it’s best to drive straight through to our final destination — or stop along the way. The way we drove it was two days of driving four and a half hours each day.

I think if it wasn’t for my dad living four and a half hours along the way, we wouldn’t stop but try to push through.

An hour from our destination, we stopped in Filmore at the Filmore Historical Museum where they have the Hinckley House — a home that was originally owned by my husband’s relatives. One was an artist, Lawrence Hinckley, that I wrote about HERE.

I’ll share more about the museum trip on another day complete with photos.

Right now we’re waiting for the Vrbo previous renters to leave and the house to be cleaned. That could be a whole other story — since they are hours late leaving. What if they don’t leave? I’ve heard of such things.

When you take a road trip, do you like to make the trip in one day? Or do you like to take your time along the journey? Is it about the journey or the destination?

A Taste of Santa Barbara

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We’ll be headed to Summerland for vacation soon. That is if Olive the cat continues to be on the mend. So far, I’m happy to report that she’s doing better. Summerland is a town of about 2,000 people in the Santa Barbara area. I love it because it’s on the beach which is my favorite place to be. I looked back at my posts from last August while we were there and I found this one about my favorite food — seafood! Santa Barbara Harbor is home to two of our favorite restaurants which have the same owner.

One of the best things about beach vacations to me is fresh seafood. For more than 30 years, we’ve gone to a restaurant with fresh, fresh seafood in Santa Barbara. It’s called Brophy Bros. and it overlooks the boats at the Marina.

steamed clams at Brophy's Santa Barbara
Linguine and clams at Brophy Bros. at the marina in Santa Barbara

Brophy’s added a small taco shop with outdoor tables downstairs called On the Alley.

Whenever we’re in Santa Barbara we stop at On the Alley. This past trip we went twice for fish tacos. And we took our good friends to Brophy Bros. to treat them to dinner after enjoying many of their home-cooked meals. They introduced us to the restaurant in the early 1990s!

Yesterday, my husband and I went to the Farmer’s Market and had a hankering for a fish taco. On the Alley had a huge line out the door to order. They had people milling around in droves waiting for picnic tables to sit. They held on to their order numbers, hoping to to sit down before the food arrived. I saw some people sitting on the curb.

wave crashing at breakwall Santa Barbara marina
A wave crashing over the breakwall at the Santa Barbara Marina. We walk here after meals.

My husband suggested going upstairs to the main Brophy’s restaurant. The hostess stationed at the bottom of the stairs told us it would be an hour wait for a table. But the bar was first come first serve.

Guess what? Two seats smack in the center of the bar — complete with open air marina views — were ours! We each had a cup of chowder and split an order of fish and chips. My year-long quest for the best fish and chips is over! The fish was piping hot, moist, delicious and the batter was light, crunchy and not heavy.

View from the Brophy Brothers bar
View from the bar at Brophy’s Santa Barbara where we had cups of chowder and fish and chips.

Well worth the wait — but even better without it.

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Baja fish tacos from On the Alley.
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Sunset at the harbor.

Do you have favorite restaurants to go to on vacation? Or certain food you savor? What are they?

What makes you happy 2.0

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Puerto Penasco sunset
Sunset in Mexico in the Gulf of California.

A year ago today I wrote a blog post “What Makes You Happy.” You can read it HERE. You’ll notice a link to one of our favorite bloggers, LA.

In last year’s post, I included a list of things that made me happy. I thought I’d take a look and see if I can add to it this year. This is what I wrote last year.

This morning I was writing my daily morning pages and I wrote a long list of things that make me happy. I woke up feeling a little down, so my brilliant idea was to focus on what brings me joy and incorporate the things on my list in my daily life — or at least weekly. I had quite a list.

A few of the items were:

A trip to the ocean

A good night’s sleep

Working on a project I’m proud of

Spending time with family and friends

Swimming in the nearby lake

Swimming laps at the city pool

Reading a good book

Catching up with friends via the phone

Hiking

What can I add to the list? Here’s What Makes Me Happy 2.0:

Visits from my kids

Inviting friends over for dinner

Cooking

The Desert Botanical Garden

Musical Instrument Museum

Going to Costco with my husband and stocking up

Watching baby quail

Morning walks

Sunsets and sunrises

Reading blogs from my blogging community

Watching Olive the cat play

What makes you happy?

Do you find time to incorporate these treats into your weekly lives?

Olive playing with her catnip mouse.

Another life saved

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my daughter and Waffles
Waffles the pug with my daughter during a beach vacation.

My kids like to call me when they’re walking. Yesterday, while my daughter was walking Waffles around her neighborhood I heard her say “Oh no!”

“What?”

She talked softly, “There’s someone laying on the sidewalk. Probably a homeless person.” My daughter explained that they look away from homeless people, that they don’t want to engage them. My kids live in the Bay Area where homelessness is a problem.

“He’s bleeding!” she said. It looked to her like he had slit his wrists. She ended her call with me. Minutes later she called me back and said he was conscious and was trying to get up. I suggested calling the police but she didn’t think they would help. She tried calling some mental health crisis centers, but nobody answered. Apparently crisis hotlines are staffed at night, not in the morning.

She called me again and said she asked if he wanted her to call someone or if should she call 911. He told her to call 911 because he couldn’t get up. She did and asked for the police and an ambulance. She waited with him until they came along with the fire department.

Another life saved by my daughter.

As a lifeguard she saved a drowning young boy. Then one evening in Laguna Beach, she and my husband went for a walk and a swim. She saw two people struggling in a rip tide. It was hours after the lifeguards were off duty. She swam out to them and told them what to do, to stay calm and helped them in. My husband swam out after her and they were able to get the people — who were drunk — safely onshore.

On her way back to the vacation cottage, she spotted the neighbors dog loose. She brought the dog back safely to its yard.

Yes I’m proud of my daughter to have empathy and to be able to help those in need. She said people were walking by ignoring the man. She was the only one who stopped to help.

What would you do if you saw someone who was probably homeless, bleeding on the sidewalk? Do you think you’d try to help? Or more likely walk away? Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do.

Is it safe?

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Princesa condo resort view from patio
View from our patio where I spent hours reading.

I’m trying to get my head out of Mexico and a relaxing three-day weekend, back into the real world of everyday life.

Several of my friends were worried when they heard we were driving to Mexico. I had been afraid for more than a year. I was too afraid to go. Finally, I talked to people who have gone there and they assured us it was safe.

Sandy Beach condo view of Rocky Point
Sandy Beach (where the condos are located) looks across the bay to downtown.

The drive is very easy — once you get off Interstate 10 and the crazy Phoenix traffic. It’s a straight shot down a two-lane highway to the border. It’s such an easy drive that I take over in Gila Bend to Ajo and Why — all the way to the Visitor’s Center at the Organ Pipes Cactus National Monument. (Ajo and Why are two tiny American towns.)

The beach resort is one hour from the border on a road exactly like on our side of the border. The only difficult part is what I call the gauntlet. Once you cross the border you have about 300 meters of mutilated beggars, squeegee guys and tamale and tortilla hawkers. They surround your car and we nod our head “no thank you” repeatedly. It’s really a depressing view to enter and depart Mexico. It’s a gut wrenching contrast to our life in the states.

beach walk on Sandy Beach.
My husband during one of our many beach walks.

Once through the gauntlet, it’s smooth sailing. They love tourists. The resorts are 50/50 Americans and Mexican families. There are security guards and police at every resort and throughout the town.

We took beach walks, collected shells, and I read tons. Then we worried about where to go for dinner. That was it. I really got into a relaxed frame of mind.

Where is your favorite place to relax? What do you like to do during a weekend getaway?

Traveling the world — or not?

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Beach house near Santa Barbara
We’ll be returning to this beach cottage for the sixth time this summer.

When you go on vacation, do you like to return to the same place — or do you like to explore new areas?

I read a Wall Street Journal story called: “The Joy of Traveling to the Same Places Again and Again.” It’s written by novelist Tara Isabella Burton who wanted to travel everywhere when she was in her 20s. Now, that she’s older and married, she longs to go back to the cities and regions she loves deeply.

WHEN I WAS young I wanted to go everywhere. I had notebooks’ worth of lists: half-imagined, half-researched, of all the places I would fly off to without warning. It was easy for me to travel—I went to university in England during the golden age of budget European airlines. I could buy flights from London to Slovakia or Italy for under $10, or student-fare Eurostar tickets to Paris for $25. I would spend 4½ dreary and bleary-eyed hours on the bus from Oxford to London Stansted to catch a morning flight for a $50 weekend in Istanbul or Marrakech. I had a sense of myself as someone with wanderlust, an inchoate desire to be anywhere but where I was. Raised eclectically—I barely knew my Italian father; my American mother changed our home base with the school year—I gloried in the fact that I was never at home, anywhere. And so, there was nothing to keep me still.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-joy-of-traveling-to-the-same-places-again-and-again-11647345601?mod=life_work_featured_pos3

She goes on to say that she began to fall in love with certain areas and made friends. She’s pulled these days to traveling to those few locations.

I like to return to the same place for vacation. We spent two decades vacationing in Laguna Beach in the summer. Lately, it’s been the Santa Barbara area. We have friends there, restaurants and beaches we love. It’s like going to my happy place. We also like to visit Park City — another place with friends and natural beauty.

My memories as a child are vacationing at our cabin, Ocean Shores and Sun Valley, Idaho for skiing. We went to a few more places like the once in a lifetime big trip to Hawaii and the road trip to Disneyland. But for the most part, vacations were in the same few places and in the same hotels or condos.

I think there’s a certain comfort in returning to places we love. When traveling to somewhere new, I’m a little anxious, while returning to the places I love feels like going home.

What are your thoughts about traveling to new places, versus returning to places over and over again?

On the road again

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beach view in Santa Barbara
On our way to the beach!

I need to get packed. But, I need to do laundry first. The kitty is on her way to boarding. The lady at the pet boarding place said our Olive the cat will be boarding with Olive the pug. That should be interesting. Olive our cat is not a pug fan. Waffles is the only pug she’s met and all he wants to do is chase her. I hope they don’t place them in suites (cages) that face eachother.

One thing that definitely helped my stress level was packing and loading the car one day before. What a concept! We only need to wake up, shower and go.

A nine-hour drive awaits. I’m trying to have a positive outlook for the long drive. I’ve downloaded several books to listen to including John Grisham. I tend to have anxiety on the road, so I’m trying to frame the trip as an adventure. As something fun to do for nine hours — rather than dreading it. Maybe a positive outlook will change my reaction?

Instead of breaking up the drive into a couple days, we’re going for it. We’ll stop by my dad’s to drop off his Christmas present at the halfway point. But we’re not spending the night. We want to get to our destination.

The Airbnb is letting us check in four hours early, which I’m thankful for. One of my worries was that the owner hadn’t reached out to me yet. Now she has and we have all the details to get into our Christmas vacation house.

What excitement do you have planned for Christmas week?