Santa Barbara

Stop #2: UCSB. Surprise of the day--just HOW close the beach is to campus. Like, it is part of campus and some of the dorms have a view of this. 

For this beach loving girl, this is a huge plus. 

(For her tidepool loving mama, this feels like a huge plus, too.)

And having surf board racks outside all of the dorms has to be a good sign, too.

And apparently, the beach was really the main pro for this school because we didn't even take any pictures around campus. 

It also could have had something to do with the fact that we were all getting pretty tired. Two schools in one day is a lot. Peanut was DONE. And starving. We tried to grab dinner one campus, but everything was shut down, which at 5 p.m. on a Saturday, I guess is normal. Only since there are thousands of students living on campus, it actually seems crazy.

And because I'M a little crazy, we had also squeezed in a stop at the mission in Santa Barbara between campuses. Because we weren't going to do enough touring and I needed more. 

But I had 6 more missions to visit and this one is the least likely for us to be back by any time soon.

It's a really pretty one.

The chapel

We've now seen 16 of these. They are all similar, but have their own little twist.

And the biggest reason why I really wanted to do this one on this trip--Peanut and I just read Island of the Blue Dolphins last month for our CA history study and I wanted us to see where Karana/Juana Maria is buried. 

They had a whole room dedicated to what they know about the real woman who inspired the story.

They had this replica of her cormorant cape.

And artifacts from her island.

Including this kind of mortar and pestle that they are pretty sure she used.

I love bringing our learning to life with field trips.  

Mission San Francisco Solano

Mission #13--Bug and I went on a field trip to Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma.

We had a beautiful day, which has pretty much been the theme for this fall.

Bug liked the short little doors.

Fun fact--this is the last mission in CA, and the only one that was built after Mexico won its independence from Spain.

Fr. José Altimira actually went looking for a new mission location without permission from the church authorities because he wanted better weather than where he was located in San Francisco. He picked a beautiful spot.

We had a great tour guide who told us some fun stories about the mission and the area.

Then, we got to take a walk on this pretty bike trail to our next stop.

The historic home of General Vallejo.

I love these old houses. 

So many stories.

Such beautiful furnishings.

They had a cute doll house.

Such a great little kitchen.

The Vallejo family had lots of kids--it was fun to imagine them living here, running through the hills and enjoying the wide open space.

One of the most fascinating things I saw there--we saw these strange little holes in the wood all over the outside of the house and the other buildings on the property.

And then we saw the culprit--a woodpecker! They drill these holes, and then stuff acorns in them to store for the winter. It's doing a lot of damage to the buildings, but so interesting.

Love these field trips with my homeschooler.

Missions #11 and #12

Our trip to Solvang meant we were in a new part of CA, and we got to add two more missions to our list. Daddy-o hasn't gotten to be with us for all of them, but the kids and I have now seen 12. I don't think any of them care quite as much as I do about seeing them all, but I figure we've come this far, we might as well, haha. 9 more to go.

Sunday morning, we made a quick stop at La Purisima Mission in Lompoc on our way to church. We didn't have long at all, and this is one that would have been fun to do a little more exploring.

After church, we stopped by Mission Santa Ines in Solvang before driving home.

We had a little longer at this one to poke around in the museum and see some of the old artifacts.  

I can't ever get enough of the painted ceilings. I think I need to have a painted ceiling in my house someday.

Looking out to El Camino Real.

Field Trip to Santa Cruz

We made it down to Natural Bridges State Park for monarch season!

Every year, the monarchs migrate from colder locations up north to areas along the coast (and Mexico) for the winter. Those clusters up there in the tree--those are all resting butterflies. There were thousands and thousands of them.

The kids found the best way to observe and spent a lot of time lying on their backs, even though the ground was pretty wet.

We were lucky to be there on a fairly warm day, so they were actually pretty active. They stay in their clusters until the air temps get up to 55.

And of course, while we were there, we had to check out the beach. I was trying to count up the number of beach days we've had since we moved--I think this was number 10. That is one of the perks of living here (although no one has gotten in deeper than about to their knees because of how cold the water always is, so that would be a negative.) 

The layers in the bluffs were beautiful

It looks like carvings.

Two little limpets in their own carved out homes. It always amazes me that such small creatures can carve out spots in the rocks.

We also ran by the Santa Cruz mission. It was closed for the day (which made some of my kids very happy--they still aren't over the trip last spring when I apparently exceeded their limit for missions), and most of it isn't original anyway, 

but we did go see the one building that is still standing from the 1800s.

We've made it to 10 of the CA missions now--only 11 to go.