Dreams, Moments, Travels
Just filling days with random photos, as I don’t think we even left the house today. This photo is from our visit to a tide pool area while vacationing in Santa Barbara. You are looking at green slime on a rock. Yep, that’s the kind of quality photography I deliver here.
On the way back to Arizona today, we detoured north to the Danish Village of Solvang for a stop at the Village Spinning & Weaving Shop. Caroline wanted to visit the shop where a few of her birthday gifts had come from and pick up a couple of things. One thing led to another, and soon Caroline had many things she was going to buy. Lucky for her, her godmother Helga Hennemann had sent over a crisp new $100 bill that helped with the splurge for more stuff. We left with more books about dying, knitting lace, making socks, and some new sock yarn. All this shopping made me hungry, and as I hadn’t been to a smorgasbord in 30 years, we stopped at the Red Viking Restaurant on Copenhagen Drive and had lunch. Not too full, a stop next door at Solvang Restaurant for Arne’s Famous Aebleskivers – ball-shaped pancakes topped with raspberry jam and powdered sugar.
The shop is fantastic, well, if you are into this sort of thing, as there are a hundred different little corners to peak at. You’ll find fibers of all kinds, some beautiful yarns, and books about every subject regarding this craft you might imagine; as a matter of fact, we picked up a mushroom dyeing book that has been long out of print from the woman who perfected the method. Solvang, California, makes for a great day trip if you are in Los Angeles, unfortunately, Caroline and I have never taken more than a few minutes here, and on this visit, we stayed all of two hours. Maybe on a warmer, windy day, we can come back and do a lot more exploring.
A year ago, on this day, Caroline and her mother stood on a beach just a few miles south of here. Shoes off, standing in the water, Christmas day. In less than a month, Caroline’s mom will return but it won’t be until February that she has the opportunity to stand in the Pacific again. So this year, it was just my wife and I wandering along the tide pools looking for starfish, anemones, crabs, and shells. Not a bad way to enjoy Christmas Day.
Years after posting the above text, I was working on something and decided to add a few more images to this post, as when I was creating this post back in 2007 (it is currently 2022), we couldn’t afford to include so many photos.
The resolution of our old photos isn’t always very good, but they still managed to capture our time.
It isn’t always only the sea that grabs our attention but also those things close to shore and often just walked over.
Besides eating too much on our visits to California, maybe we visit the ocean too often. After all, we have seen thousands of starfish, anemones, and shorebirds. Honestly, though, we never tire of visiting the Pacific. Nor do we tire of visiting Disneyland, which is due for a visit early in January. Tickets are already in hand.
The sun keeps on smiling upon our lives here in Santa Barbara on Christmas Eve with our aunt Ann and uncle Woody Burns. Just hanging out with family, it’s not always easy to find enough to photograph without being intrusive and distracted, so we chill and talk.
My aunt and uncle’s backyard has been thoroughly renovated and is once again a charming place to sit back in the sun and watch the birds at the new bird feeder and their birdbath. Behind my uncle are two orange trees and a lemon tree. This being winter on the coast, the skies are bright blue, the air crisp, even clean from recent high winds. Originally, the plans were to stay a few days in Santa Barbara and then meander up the coast, but we decided to return to Arizona early and spend a week at home, take in some movies, and catch up on some quality time together.
Driving from Phoenix, Arizona, to Santa Barbara, California, takes us east on Interstate 10 with the obligatory stop at Hadley Orchards, if not for sweets, a pitstop for the facilities. Our goal is to spend the Christmas holiday with family, that being our Aunt Ann and Uncle Woody.