While Silvette grew up in the Queen Ann area of Seattle, a number of years ago her parents and siblings one by one immigrated to Santa Barbara, California. Even our daughter, Andrea, went down to Santa Barbara for college. Our family is the only one left here in the Seattle area. Because of that, we have made quite a few trips to Santa Barbara over the years and have become fairly familiar with the area. This year Silvette’s sister invited us to come down to celebrate Thanksgiving, and we accepted the invitation.
This was not our first Thanksgiving in Santa Barbara. In 2020 we drove down from San Jose with Andrea for Thanksgiving, but ended up not staying. Shortly after we arrived a fire swept though the property of Silvette’s sister. Everyone was safe, but we decided not to stay for Thanksgiving itself. You can read that story here.
The following year our whole family went down for Thanksgiving including our soon-to-be daughter-in-law. That time Andrea and I ventured over to Channel Island National Park. A few days later Silvette and I visited the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
This year we didn’t have any big plans for the weekend. We didn’t even rent a car as we expected to have a pretty quiet visit. However, that doesn’t mean we just sat around and ate pies. (although we did do that). Silvette’s sister’s home sits in the foothills, and they have a large property so there are a number of roads and trails that we can wander so we did. In Seattle the flora is pretty dead at this time of year, but we discovered that there are a number of interesting plants that are blooming in November in Santa Barbara, and it was fun to discover some of these on the property as we walked around.
The fire I mentioned above is not the only fire that his property has endured. Down in a valley near a creek stands the remains of a house that burned down quite a few years ago in another fire that swept over the hillside. Sadly in that fire someone died at the house.
We did catch a ride down to the main street of Santa Barbara and noted that things have changed over the years. One of the biggest changes was the city blocked off State Street through town for quite a few blocks. This has allowed restaurants to build outside seating areas for their customers. This seemed to have started with COVID, but it is still going strong. The restaurants were quite busy, and customers appeared to like sitting outside. The funny thing was that even though the street was closed, most people still walked on the sidewalks. Bicyclists not pedestrians were the ones using the street.
Another change we noted was the number of closed and empty stores. This included the two major department stores that had been in the center of town, Macys and Nordstroms. The drugstore on State Street was also closed. Despite this the restaurants remained busy, and some of the storefronts remained open and seemed to attract customers. The closed stores didn’t seem to deter tourists from being downtown.
I didn’t take my camera with me, but I did snap a couple of photos with my phone of some things that caught my eye. They are very different views of Santa Barbara.
While we like to think we are pretty familiar with Santa Barbara, it turns out we are not as familiar as we thought. On Sunday we discovered an area we had never been to before. This was the Douglas Family Preserve. Our nephew suggested it to us as a place near his home where we could walk and get some exercise. After a family breakfast at a nearby restaurant, we walked to the preserve.
The preserve is high up on the cliffs above the ocean. While the downtown area is at water level, going west one climbs to the cliff level. The preserve offers views out over the Pacific Ocean including distant views of the Channel Islands. It also provides a nice place to walk amidst nature, particularly trees. There is a wide path that circles the preserve as well as other paths that cross in the middle.
At the west end of the reserve are cliffs over the beach that one can see below. That’s where we headed next. We continued around the reserve until we came to a path that led down the hill to Cliff Drive below. That was a fairly steep path down with a bridge over water at the bottom. Across Cliff Drive we could see another reserve area, Elings Park. We had considered walking over there, but we could see there was no trees for shade. We opted to go to the beach instead.
It was a short walk to Arroyo Burro Beach County Park. The small beach access area lies between two cliffs so the space is limited. Nevertheless it is still quite popular so the parking was full. One of the drawing points is a restaurant that sits right on the beach. People can enjoy a meal along with the scenery. Another unique feature is a doggy bath area. It’s a perfect solution after Rover runs around in the sand and salt water.
We decided to walk up the beach a ways. There was a nice cool breeze coming off the water so even though it was a sunny day, it wasn’t too hot. The beach was not particularly crowded once we got away from the center of the beach. It was an interesting beach with a lot of seaweed in some places and some interesting rock formations in others. Tall cliffs bordered the beach. The tide seemed to be going out so we had room to walk and wave action was pretty mild. It was a pleasant walk and, the sound of the waves offered a calming sense to the day.
After spending time at the beach, we walked back to a place to be picked up. Silvette’s brother kindly drove us back to my sister-in-law’s place. Because their home is in the foothills, they have a distant view of the ocean. Almost every night we enjoyed a beautiful sunset. Santa Barbara actually faces south, which can be a bit confusing so we didn’t see the sun actually set, but the colors in the sky were quite intense at times. It was definitely a great way to end each day.
It is also time to end this blog for 2024. I want to thank all my loyal readers for your support over this last year. It has been an exciting year of blogging as the number of views I receive have increased by about 150% from last year. However, it is my small group of loyal subscribers who make it all worthwhile. I will be taking a break for the next three weeks as we will be doing some extensive traveling. I may post some pictures, but I plan to return with stories of some exciting adventures in mid-January. Until then I pray you have a blessed and wonderful Christmas and a fabulous New Year.
Credit: Silvette Lee took the last three sunset photos.