California Vacation 2002-2003
January 2, 2003
On January 2, William waited on our private porch at Prufruck's for a little while, in the morning.
The we walked to the beach. Carpinteria beach was listed by some beach guru in Florida as one of the 20 top beaches in the country, and it is a pretty beach - but the recent storms caused a lot of erosion and added rocks just in time for our visit. Maybe because of recent storms? They certainly had piled a lot of sand into berms to protect housing near the beach, as you can see in this picture. You can also see the rocks.
We walked south on the beach towards Carpinteria's "tar pits". It's a bunch of asphalt oozing from the beach - the Indians used to use it to waterproof their canoes. It's got to be connected somehow with the oil wells that dot the Santa Barbara channel. Here's some tar pit action:
If you look closely, you can see those oil wells in the Santa Barbara channel:
After our trip to the beach and the tar pits, we walked back to Prufrock's crossing the railroad tracks and through a residential neighborhood
That afternoon we went to Rincon beach, near the county line between Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. It's a popular surfing beach - no sand there for sunbathers. We got there at low tide on a "new" moon day, so the tide was especially low, a condition that attracts the surfers. Unfortunately it puts them pretty far out there, so our low-powered camera couldn't really do them justice. Here's one passable shot, followed by some coastal sealife sunning itself during lowtide.
That evening we went to Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. It's got some restaurants and a museum (closed at night), and spectacular sunsets.
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