From Santa Barbara, California, to Whitehorse, Yukon
Friday, Saturday and Sunday were busy days, with visits to more of Santa Barbara’s attractions, flying to Kelowna for a day there, and then flying home.
The first order of business was lunch, but on the way this tattoo parlour caught my eye. Often a sign that you’re in a less-desirable part of town, that is apparently not the case here. I wasn’t quick enough to catch the Cadillac coming out of the alley to the left.
We went to the Paradise Cafe, seen to the right in the photo above, for lunch, and I had one of the very few memorably good meals of the entire trip. The halibut was on the very short list of the best I’ve ever had. Dad had his first-ever avocado as part of his meal. Shelly mentioned that Santa Barbara county is a significant avocado growing area, and in my research about that, I found a lengthy and excellent article about the subject in the Santa Barbara Independent.
On our post-lunch wander back to the parking garage, we went by the Oreña Adobe. This was a family name that we saw in the Mission Santa Barbara cemetery. The one-story adobe on the right in this photo was constructed in 1849 by José de la Guerra, fifth comandante of the Santa Barbara Presidio. It was used as a storehouse for merchandise received from ships. Gaspar Oreña purchased the property and built the adjacent story-and-a-half adobe in 1858.
Although I’d spent some time with my sister’s copy of Santa Barbara Architecture: From Spanish Colonial to Modern, I was unable to tell an old Spanish Colonial style building from a new one, so plaques like this were useful.
And it seems like a safe bet that no modern building has a roof quite like like this.
This quiet square is surrounded by businesses of the investment-consulting type.
I always enjoy custom license plates – how “California” is this one? The Jag was filthy, which rather spoiled the overall effect, though. 🙂
We passed two antique shops that I would have loved to see, but one was only open by appointment, and this one was closed for a couple of hours.
On Saturday afternoon, Dad and I were to start our trip home – 2 flights for us together, then another flight for me. Before we left Santa Barbara, though, there were a couple more sites that I wanted to see.
The first was Alice Keck Park, a 4.6 acre garden downtown. It was the site of a large private home from 1904 until 1913, when the home became the central block of a hotel called El Mirasol. The hotel was demolished in 1969, and 6 years later, Alice Keck bought the property and provided the funds for development of the garden that she donated to the City in 1980. In this photo is one of the more distinctive plants in the garden, a Floss Silk Tree (Chorisia insignis).
This is very much an educational garden, with a focus on plantings that use little water. It’s very well done, with print, signage and audio stations with a great deal of information.
A closer look at a Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) enjoying the Butterfly Garden.
A large pond in the centre of the garden has lots of turtles, as well as some ducks.
Shelly claims that this tree knows that it’s Fall – at 80+ degrees, I’m not convinced! 🙂
The other place that I wanted to see was the courthouse, famous for its murals and tilework as well as offering a viewing deck to look over the city.
Looking up to the painted ceiling of the tower. Construction of the building began in 1926 after the previous one was heavily damaged in the 1925 earthquake, and it was dedicated on August 14, 1929.
The view from the tower.
The mural room is very impressive. The murals took 4 months to complete in 1929, and the artist and 2 helpers were paid a total of $9,000 for the work.
The tiled stairwell of the tower.
Back outside, an interesting quote over a doorway arch: “God gave us the country, the skill of man hath built the town” (from the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro, 116-27 B.C.). Although the Michelin Guide to the city says that it’s the city’s motto, I can find no evidence that it actually is.
And that was it – back to Shelly and Dick’s for lunch, then to the airport. Although I had wanted to get some photos of the Santa Barbara airport, particularly the terminal, there was just too much going on, and I didn’t. Because I had a bulkhead seat on the first flight so my large camera couldn’t go under the seat in front of me, I was camera-less as we got great views of the Channel Islands. We then had a 4-hour layover at LAX.
At 7:38 pm, I took this shot from my seat in a United CRJ-600 as we taxied out to the runway.
I shot a few shots of the lights as we left the Los Angeles area, then went to sleep for much of the 2 hour, 50 minute flight direct to Kelowna.
The United flight gets to Kelowna at 10:19 every night, about an hour too late to connect with the Air North flight to Whitehorse, so I spent another day with Dad, picked a case of local wine, and visited with some other family members. At midnight on Sunday, I stepped out of the Whitehorse airport terminal into a cold rain. Cold rain or not, it was great to be back home with Cathy and the fur-kids.
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