Business Travel - Lompoc/Santa Barbara California

I was on the road this past week this time in Lompoc (pronounced Lom - poke) California. It was about an hour drive from Santa Barbara. So I flew from Dallas to LA and then from LA to Santa Barbara. From there I rented a car and drove to Lompoc.

I did a little research before I went and found that I was going to be driving up the Pacific Coast Highway. I'd heard that it was really a beautiful drive so I was kind of looking forward to that.

Santa Barbara is a neat little town. It's very expensive but it's quaint. I've never been able to spend any quality time there. I usually visit on business and business doesn't really lend itself to being a tourist. Santa Barbara is cool because it's at the foot of these beautiful mountains and also right on the Pacific coast.
View of Santa Barbara flying in from LA.
Sunset on the ocean - a view from the plane.

I'd never been to Lompoc but I'd read about it in some of my mystery novels. As I was driving up the Pacific Coast highway, I was a little disappointed. I thought I'd literally be driving right along the ocean line. But that was not the case, at least heading North. There were the Southbound lanes, a set of railroad tracks (for the Amtrak that was still running) and a lot of brush between me and the ocean. So, in some instances it was hard for me to even see the water. Along the way, I saw a sign to Refugio State Park. I decided to pull over because I thought this might be the only chance I get to see the water while I'm here.
View of the sunset from Refugio State Park.
The beach was closed to campers but since there was no one at the gate, I just drove in, took some pics and left.
I thought the colors of the night were so pretty. It was a bit overcast and rainy there. So this was the extent of my Pacific Coast highway view going into Lompoc. Beautiful but not at all what I expected. When I turned off the highway to take the road to Lompoc, it was about 6:30 pm. In about five minutes, it became pitch black. From what I could tell, Lompoc was in a valley in between the mountains. But there was NOTHING on the way out there. Nothing but blackness. That was a little disconcerting. I felt lucky to have the GPS as company.

As I got closer to the town, I actually began to see the light. I drove straight to my hotel and stayed in for the night.

When I go to these places, I always try to eat at restaurants that we don't have at home. The next day, I went to lunch with the client and she suggested this place called Burrito Loco. I kid you not. I thought - how good could it be, really? I'm kind of a Mexican Food snob. This place was awesome. In fact, it was so good that if I hadn't been so full from lunch, I'd have gone back at dinner. I got pork in this green chile sauce that resembled something my grandmother would make.

When we were done for the day, I decided to drive around the town and check it out in the daylight hours. I was right in that it was nestled between several mountains. There appeared to be a big ranch presence. Lots of cows or other four legged cow looking animals.

I drove by this place called the McKay-Spanne House.
It was built in 1875 when Lompoc was just a fledgling town. The guy that built it, Henry Wadsworth Fabing seemed to have more faith in the the town than others around him. In 1902, the house was bought by William McKay, who was an immigrant from Ireland. In 1910, the house was bought by Nis Spanne. After that, it was purchased by the Lompoc Historical Society. It was about to be torn down.
So, I wonder why it wasn't called the Fabing-McKay-Spanne house...

It was after 5 so it was closed. No tours. Like I said, business travel doesn't really lend itself to being a tourist. I drove out by La Purisma Mission but that closed at 5 and I couldn't even take any photos.

Just driving around town, I realized that they had murals everywhere. I took photos of a few that I liked. I'm not sure how you get to paint the murals, etc but some of them were really nice.
Here are a couple of my favorite ones. This train makes me think of people visiting one another. There are some specters there outlined in white, like ghosts.
This one is just kind of old-timey. Plus it has the city name it in. But seriously, these murals are everywhere.
I stayed at the Embassy Suites. I love that place. They have happy hour and a good breakfast. This particular hotel had this cool garden in the courtyard.

As I was driving out of town, I found it to be a lot different than coming in. For starters, it was daylight so I could actually see. It's beautiful.
They had a lot of these churches that were old-timey. This was the First Baptist Church. The city was very green. Lots of mountains and beautiful views.
Heading back into Santa Barbara, I drove south on the Pacific Coast highway. That was much more like what I expected. So many times, I wanted to pull over and just take pictures. Unfortunately, it's very traffic-y on that highway. They had a couple of turnouts that I was able to pull into.
That's me with the Pacific Ocean behind me.
This are the railroad tracks that run along the coast line. They are used by Amtrak. That's got to be a beautiful train ride.
I thought this was really pretty coastline. I drove back to Santa Barbara so that I could stay near the airport. My flight in the morning was at 8:30 am and I thought it made more sense to sleep until 7 and then drive the two miles to the airport so I could be there by 7:30. While in Santa Barbara, I had to try the famous In & Out Burger. I've heard about it from many places but mostly from John when he goes to San Diego.
The line in the drive through was wrapped around the building. I had a single burger meal, which came with fries & a drink. Through the window, I could see them slicing the potatoes to make the french fries. I have to tell you, the fries were terrible. I didn't eat them. The burger, on the other hand, was really good.

It was a nice trip. I think my meeting with the client went well and I got to see a bit of California that I hadn't seen before.

Living History

Do you remember being on phone restriction? Oh come on, you know you're out there. Some of you are the reason I was on phone restriction.

I was thinking of my grandma. She died when she was 93 and I thought how amazing her life was. She lived through so much history. She came over to this country in the '20's, no such thing as television, etc. But then I thought, hey - I'm living through amazing times as well. The phone is a great example.

When I was younger, I had to walk to school up hill both ways in the snow. Sorry - I just had to throw that in. Actually, we had one phone in the kitchen and one phone in my mom's room. I was on the phone with my friends from the time I got home from school until the time I went to bed. Of course, this was before call waiting, call notes and all those things.

I remember one time I was on the phone with my friend in my parent's room. I guess my parents were calling and they kept getting a busy signal. I remember my dad storming through the house into that room and hanging up the phone. I don't think I was allowed to answer the phone for a year. This would have been when I was in junior high.

When we moved to Texas, we got this cool thing called call waiting. So, when I was on the phone, if someone was calling, it would make this beeping sound in my ear. I could put the person I was talking to on hold and answer the other line. Man! That would have saved me so much heartache.

When I got a job while in high school, I saved up enough money so that I could buy my own phone for my room. I had a phone jack but phones were expensive. When I had the phone in my room, I thought I was queen of the world. Then I invested in something called an answering machine. I'd never miss another call, right?

When I first moved out, they came up with cordless phones. They were huge phones with no cords. Instead they had antennas. BUT - you could walk around your house and talk on the phone and not get tangled up in the wires. That was cool because it didn't matter where the phone jack was, you could take the handset anywhere.

Shortly after that, they came up with this thing called caller id. Remember when you'd answer the phone and it was someone you didn't want to talk to? After answering machines came out, you'd let the machine get it - just in case but some times people would just hang up. Now we had caller id. This would flash the number of the person calling. If I didn't recognize the number, I wouldn't answer. It was a great way to avoid all those weirdo people that would stalk you! Amazing.

When I was in college, I dated a guy that had a phone in his car. That was cool. He could order pizza on the way home from work and meet the pizza guy at the door. It was REALLY expensive to make a call, though. On one or two rare occasions, he'd let me use the phone. It was a real novelty.

When I got out of college, they had these cool things called cell phones. They were the size of a brick but they could fit in your purse. You could call people no matter where you where. It was so cool! It cost about fifty cents a minute but if you called after 7 pm, it was only two cents a minute. AND, you could call long distance for only two cents a minute after 7pm. If only I'd had that when we moved here.

I recently purchased an iPhone. This phone is very slim. Not only can I make calls, I can take pictures (still photos and movies), I can record conversations, I can make notes, I can check my email (which is a whole different conversation), I can text people (instant message!) and I can access the Internet. OH! and I can have my entire music collection loaded in there too. It's all on one little hand held device.

My nephew is 7. He thinks he needs a cell phone. My sister said, "who are you gonna call?" He said, "Tanner". Tanner lives next door to them. She told him he could just walk next door and talk to Tanner.

My other nephew is 14 and he has a cell phone. I don't know who he calls but I do know that he sure texts my husband a lot. These kids will probably never know what it was like to have to talk on a phone that was attached to a wall. They'll never know the anguish of having phone restriction. In another few years, they'll probably never have heard of a phone!

Snow Days

The saying in Texas is that if you don't like weather then wait a minute. Our weather is always changing. I think we, in Dallas, were all surprised with the weather the past couple of days. It's February and we've just had two days of snow.

When you think of snow in Dallas, it's really kind of a joke. We get this light dusting of precipitation. Nothing sticks and it's usually gone the next day. What we mostly get is ice. Not this past week though. I woke up on Thursday morning to find it snowing and snowing hard. I couldn't believe it. Then I thought - it'll be over in an hour. But no - it went on ALL day. I think we got 6 or 7 inches of snow. And it was real snow - just like they get up North.
This is my house at about 10:00 in the morning on Thursday. You can still see the snow falling. The layer of snow on the roof doesn't look that bad...yet.

John was working from home. His team works out of San Diego and they asked him to send a picture of a snow angel. So, of course, I couldn't resist that. I made a snow angel in the back yard.
I know I look pretty ridiculous but I don't think I've ever made a snow angel before. When I got up, I had to change my pants & underwear because they were soaking wet. It was funny, really.
I don't think it came out too badly for a first timer. Even during the making of this snow angel, the snow kept falling. And it was COLD! A couple of hours later, I wanted to take a picture of the snow angel with my camera.
You can barely even see it now. That's how much it was snowing. On the news they said it started at 6:00 am. It didn't stop until the next morning.

When I got up on Friday morning, the snow had finally stopped but it had completely covered everything.
This is my back yard. My poor tree is weighted down with snow.
This is outside my front door. Isn't it beautiful? It looks so quiet and peaceful.
My street before anyone was up and about.

At lunch, I decided to take a walk through the neighborhood to see how everything looked. There were a lot of snowmen around. This was one of the better ones.
There's a creek down by the park near our house. I walked over thinking it would be really pretty there and I was not disappointed. This picture really doesn't do it justice.
On the way back home, I saw that the snow did quite a bit of damage. You would think something as innocuous as snow would not cause any damage but the weight of the snow broke tree limbs. Our tree in front of the house lost a limb. I thought it was because it was a thin tree. But check out this tree.
This tree was no lightweight. It was a mature full grown tree and the weight of the snow basically snapped it in half. The branches were blocking the entire street. That was so sad. I hate to think of such an enjoyable experience as this snow storm having caused damage like this. This was the worst that I saw in our neighborhood but it wasn't the only tree that came down.

The weather during my walk was wonderful. It was cold, no doubt. But it was crisp. It wasn't windy at all so it was really very pleasant. There were lots of kids out building snowmen and snow forts - lots of snowball fights, lots of laughter. I had no idea we had so many kids in our neighborhood. I made my way back home. This is how the house looked when all was said and done.
Pretty.

Tomorrow it will all be slush and it will be a big mess but for now, it's nice.