May 22th to 27th. (By Gill)

After a very cold evening in the shady San Francisco hostel, we headed out to the airport and dropped off Marija and Tessa. We then spent the rest of the day driving down the 101 to Santa Barbara and stayed in Los Padres national forest, app. 9 miles outside of the city.

We woke up Sunday morning to a ‘Manhunt” or more specifically a “Teenagerhunt”. Apparently 3 kids escaped from the youth detention centre somewhere in the area, so we woke up to helicopters, cop cars and bloodhounds. After breakfasts excitement, we headed into Santa Barbara proper and checked out the courthouse, and El Presido historic house. We then hit up Starbucks for the free internet and a Kmart for some Tupperware. On the way back up to the campsite we detoured deep into Los Padres forest on a road that literally went through a river 7 times to go see Red Rock; we didn’t actually find it.

Compared to Sunday morning, Monday seemed much quieter and after breakfast, we again headed into Santa Barbara. We went to La Supra Rica for lunch, a Mexican restaurant voted America’s best by the New York Times and was reported to be Julia Child’s favourite Mexican restaurant. We were told to find the resturant by the line-up out the door, as there was no sign. It was everything it was made out to be, and cheap!! Tom and I had lunch with drinks for 20$, after talking with 2 local women over lunch, we hit up Ablitt house, a very weird and cool 4 story house built in the middle of a parking lot. We then went to butterfly beach and watched pelicans diving into the ocean for fish as we tried to tan.

We left the beach and started driving into L.A., thinking that there was a state park in Malibu with camping.