Solvang, California

Good morning, my friends. What a beautiful day we had yesterday. We were hoping for no rain for our visit to Solvang. As it turns out, it was a mostly sunny day. We got into a few rain showers, but nothing that lasted for more than a few minutes. I was happy enough to see the morning sunshine, that I got dressed and walked over to Buena Vista Lake for a picture.

Turning a little to the right, it looked like this:

Turning to the left, it looked like this:

There were a few coots swimming around.

And I took this picture just so you'd know I wasn't kidding about the blue sky.

Turning around and walking back, that's our rig. If you look just to the right side of the RV, you can see Mike rounding up our hoses and cords, readying for another day of travel.

Oh yes, and I got an in-focus shot of the "cootvention."

They're shy birds, and they walked in the other direction as I got closer to them. Still, I managed to get a pretty good shot of their feet.

Okay, so that was a nice start to the day, but we had driving to do, and diesel fuel to buy. When we stopped for diesel, I was taken in by the ripples in the landscape. The dark strip toward the bottom of the image below is a field of grapevines.

Below, I wanted you to see the flume. It carries water up over the top of the hill from the California Aqueduct. At the top are turbines. So, power is used to pump the water to the top of the hill and over to the other side. As it spills to the other side, it turns the turbines, generating and recapturing at least some of the energy used to pump it uphill. Cool, huh?

And knowing that, one would think we'd cross the aqueduct as we turned west. And there it is:

The road was absolutely terrible as we crossed over the mountains via the Tejon Pass. California, work on your roads, wouldja? Reaching the other side, we saw the first of the California avocado groves. Oh man...we're Jonesing for some of those delicious avocados.

And then we drove toward Santa Barbara. We were too far north, but with the palm trees lining this road, we might as well have been on Santa Monica Blvd. It looks like Hollywood or Beverly Hills.

Stopped at a stoplight, I opened the window for this shot of a date palm.

A few more miles down the road, we caught the first glimpses of the Pacific Ocean outside Mike's window.

There were more expansive views to come:

In the image below, you can see a pier or a bridge or a road or something that leads out to an island. (It looks a little like a ship in the image, but it was an island.) We couldn't locate anything on the map about this, and there was no helpful signage either.

Amtrak's Pacific Surfrider train paralleled us for a short while.

Eventually, we could see Cachuma Lake...our final destination for the day.

It was an uphill climb on a narrow road to reach the campground.

We thought we'd be "dry" camping last night (no power, water, or sewer), but we asked if any hook-up spots were available. Indeed, there were. Nice. And it was a quiet place to sleep for the night. Backing into our site, I spotted these two red tail hawks there to greet us.

They were there for a while...separating, so that I could get their individual portraits.

It was around 2:30 p.m. by then, and so we wasted no time getting back on the road for a visit to Solvang.

The street was lined with these Danish banners.

The architecture was the thing. We drove down the main drag, and I took pictures of pretty much everything I saw there.

We ended up parking on a side street and walking up and down. When I saw this sign, I knew I had to go inside.

Inside, it was a claustrophobic's nightmare. I found a refrigerator magnet and then fled the place. They did have some cute stuff. 

I didn't take pictures of every blooming thing, but a few were irresistible. These African daisies, for example.

Some lantana...

And this pretty rose.

We had a late lunch/early dinner, and then headed back to our campsite. Along the way, we stopped off at the Bradbury Dam Observation Point. It was a pretty view of Cachuma Lake in the setting sun. You can see the full moon in the upper right of the image below.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, this lake is created from one of the three spurs off the California Aqueduct.

There's the dam, creating the lake.

And you know it's been a banner day when I can find a refrigerator magnet and a shot glass. First ones of the trip.

Okay, so let's talk about this Cranberry-Cookie Butter Cheesecake I made before we left home. I scaled the recipe to half and made it in this 4-1/2 inch spring form pan.

 

We had it for dessert last night. It has two layers of filling...the top layer made from cream cheese and some cranberry "jelly" that was cooked on the stove-top from fresh cranberries. The bottom layer is cream cheese and some cookie paste. I talked some about how this was made at this Christmas Eve blog post. (It sounds so long ago now.) Cutting into it, it looks like this:

And it was pretty darned tasty. The crust is made from cookies, and it was very nice. Definitely, I'll be making this again. I'd like to make the full-sized version and serve it to my cheesecake-eating family back home.

Okay, so we have one more day of driving today. We'll end our day in Escondido, and we'll stay put for the next four weeks. We're hoping we can get our slide repaired while we're there. Either way, we're making due with our smallified space, and so the trip goes on regardless. We already have a dinner invitation from my dear friend, Debi. She's gotten our gang of eight together for a late lunch/early dinner. I'm looking forward to seeing all these folks.

We've eaten all our frozen breakfast burritos, and so I have to make actual breakfast this morning. Oh, the humanity. And with that ahead of me, I guess I'll get going.