Saw Monty Don on TV visit the Botanical Gardens in Santa Barbara, so thought we would follow in his footsteps (being born again gardeners!) Unfortunately the lack of rain has had a detrimental effect on the vegetation. It is set in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. The gardens display only the native flora of California. It also, contains the Mission Dam and Aqueduct built in 1807 to supply water to the Santa Barbara Mission. The garden is divided into ...

Visited Santa Barbara Mission today. The tenth of twenty one Missions set up by the Spanish Franciscans, on the Camino Real (Royal Road) which runs the length of the California coast. The first Mission was set up in San Diego and the twenty first in what is now Sonoma, north of San Francisco. The Missions were set up to Convert the Chumash Indians to Christianity. The original church was an adobe building, simple and unpretentious. The present church, the fou...

A lovely sunny day in Santa Barbara. This must be the ideal climate. The end of October and it's 72C. It is an idyllic town. Very Mexican/Spanish. Visited the Courthouse. Much of Santa Barbara was destroyed by an earthquake in 1925. The Courthouse was rebuilt in a Mediterranean style. This Spanish/Moorish building was designed by William Mooser. It is a charming irregular building, full of colour, windows of many shapes, lacy iron grillwork and tiny balconies. T...

Not much to report today. Had a long tiring drive down Highway 14. Desert, desert and more desert. Temperature rose from -5C at Mammoth to 24C when we arrived in Summerland, just outside Santa Barbara. Accommodation great. Very stylish. An old wooden house with lots of character, perched on a steep hill, overlooking Pacific Ocean. Heaven!

After a difficult and icy drive down the steep hill from the apartment, we once again hit the highway. Went to visit Mono Lake, a surreal place, that looks totally out of place on this planet. Here comes another geography lesson ... Mono Lake is a shallow, salty, soda lake that formed 760,000 years ago. It has no outlet to the ocean, so has extremely high salt levels, so much so that only brine shrimp can survive. However, these brine shrimp provide food for 2,...