Taking Pictures in Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Olivos, CA

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My husband had to go to Ventura today, and leave two hours before my normal getting up time. He wanted me to go. I wanted to have time to take pictures on the trip. So I said I'd go if he took me out for lunch, let me take pictures wherever I wanted after lunch (he was to finish his business before lunch), and filled my car with gas after we got back home. He agreed, so we took our first trip out to have some fun after our respective bouts with flu. Wish I had space here to share a sampling of all we did, but I thought you might like the beach picture best. All I did was stop to take pictures there for my zazzle store. That was the purpose of most of today's pictures, but some I keep on file in case I need them to illustrate my writing. So I took 317 pictures. The first ones were looking down over Santa Barbara from Highway 154. Then, while Hubby met the prospective tenant at our building, I walked around the residential area near the high school and took pictures of flowers, Ventura High, and some very interesting houses. As usual, I wished I could wave a magic wand and make all the electric and phone wires disappear for a few minutes. But I couldn't. One very interesting house with a very interesting tree in front had heavy wires over the front and both sides. It almost looked as though it were wrapped with wires. After Hubby was through with the interview and had the application in hand, we went to lunch. It wasn't very good. I could have held out for a better place, but I was hungry, so went along with the closest place. The first stop was the beach you see here. We stopped just so I could take pictures. The next stop was Santa Barbara. Never go to Santa Barbara on Sunday afternoon on the first nice day of the season. It was CROWDED. First we were going to park at the beach, but that was $7.00, so we decided to find the bird sanctuary I went to 20 years ago or more. At least parking was free there. I haven't had time to look at all the pictures yet, but I hope I got some of the birds -- not just the lake and vegetation. The big thing was that we went for our first walk since we've been sick. That is remarkable, since we haven't been up to really exercising for about two weeks. So that was nice. After that we went to the mission to take pictures. Bad idea. All kinds of people were there taking pictures -- mostly of other people taking pictures. You just couldn't' get any pictures that didn't have people in them. For Zazzle you can't have recognizable faces. I wanted to get the fountain in front of the mission, but one family was using it as a bench. The boy, instead of sitting with his mother and siblings, insisted on walking around and around the fountain, so it was hard to get a picture without faces. When I wanted to photograph the large cross memorial to Father Serra, there were two women taking each other's pictures in front of the cross in the other direction. When I wanted a picture of the front of the church, what looked like a professional photographer had his camera set up on a tripod right in the center of what I wanted a picture of. He was photographing a young lady in a very dressy black dress. I would have thought it was a bride, except there was no one there but her. I then wished we'd just walked in the park we discovered on the way to the mission. We gave up and got back on the freeway. We took 154 through the pass by Cachuma Lake. I stopped once at a vista to get a few pictures of the mountains and then stopped again in Los Olivos to take pictures of different kinds of terrain. I found some horses that seemed quite happy to pose for me. They were very beautiful horses. By this time the sun was about to set, so the next stop was to try to get some sunset pictures. That didn't go as well, but I won't know until I see the results. All in all it was quite a busy but varied day with scenery, exercise, and some good pictures. Now that I've reported to you, I will look at the rest of the pictures. I really get excited when I've come home with a full camera. I want to see how they turned out -- especially the ones where I shot blindly because the light was reflecting off the screen. How do you feel when you are about to unload your camera ?