Car-Free and Carefree - Part Three

Are you caught up?  Part One is here and Part Two is here.

When last we blogged, Chris and I finished up a lovely Sunday in Santa Barbara, having enjoyed a glorious day of wandering all over the city, drinking and eating its finest offerings.  On Monday morning, our last day in town, we woke up at a relatively normal time and headed to breakfast at Dawn Patrol, a local coffee shop/cafe.  The food and drinks were delicious, and we lingered for awhile, savoring the quiet morning.

After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel to pack things up and check out of our room, storing our bags with the front desk.  Our train wasn't leaving until 2pm, and we still had a few things to see in the nearby area; since the hotel was nice and close to the Amtrak station, we had plenty of time to swing back by and grab our bags before our train arrived.

We next headed to Stearns Wharf, having plenty of time to wander its length before our actual destination, the Sea Center linked with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, opened at 10am.

Hanging out on the wharf.

Time for animals!

The Sea Center is small but mighty, and they have some really great exhibits, including a few touch tanks.  Being someone who loves to pet almost any creature on this earth (snakes being the notable examples), I was fully in.  The first of the two main touch tanks included sting rays and coastal sharks; growing up on the Gulf of Mexico, I am more comfortable with the rays than sharks, but all of the animals in the tank were docile and actually seemed to enjoy human contact.

 I like this photo because
I'm totally coo'ing to the shark.
"Hey, little guy!
Aren't you cute!"

In addition to the sharks in the touch tank, there also was an exhibit on the babies of this species, including the egg sacks from which they hatch.

"Hello, world!"

We finished up the bottom floor of the Sea Center in the classroom area, where the guide encouraged Chris to pull up the crab trap to see if they'd caught anything yet that morning.

Sadly, no crabs yet!

We headed upstairs to the second floor of the center to see the models hanging over the foyer and the cool jellyfish exhibit.

Ooh!

Aah!

Eeh!

Making new buddies

After a quick stop at the puppet show area, we were done with the center, having only spent about 45 minutes there.  While we could have probably taken up to another hour, it's a pretty small place, albeit worth the relatively low price it cost for entrance.

"And then I says to Myrtle, I says..."

Since we didn't spend as much time as anticipated at the Sea Center, we had an hour to kill before lunch, and we wandered back toward downtown, just to see what there was along the way.  Very soon, we ran across a building we'd seen multiple times over the weekend, the Reagan Ranch Center.  Intrigued by the picture of President Reagan in a cowboy hat on the outside and the advertised free admission, we tentatively wandered inside, not really knowing what to expect.  The Ranch Center is funded by the Young America's Foundation, which is a group dedicated to teaching students with an interest in politics the principles of conservative thought as exhibited by Governor and then President Reagan.  The Center itself is half classroom/lecture space with the other half being dedicated to the exhibition and preservation of artifacts from the President's "Western White House," just up the road on the coast.  Apparently, the ranch itself is pretty remote and the roads aren't well kept, so most folks visit the items here at the Center in Santa Barbara.

A docent led us on a tour of the exhibits (a small group consisting of myself, Chris, and an Irish tourist who wandered in off the street), explaining the items as we went.  The tour lasted about 40 minutes and included all sorts of interesting information, and after that, we were at liberty to explore the museum on our own.  Although we were young enough during Reagan's terms that we didn't remember all of the items firsthand, this one still resonated:

Yup, that's a piece of the Berlin Wall.

We explored a bit more, taking some pictures and listening to some of the impressive multimedia displays in the facility.

When we got hungry enough, we bid adieu to our docent and the rest of the staff, and we headed around the corner to the Brewhouse, another local Santa Barbara brewery and restaurant.  By this time, I was good on brews, but Chris grabbed a pour of their tripel to go with our sandwiches and cheese dip appetizer.  Everything was pretty darn good, and we left full and happy and ready to ride on the train.

The train ride itself was calm and uneventful; everything was on time, and Dad was waiting for us in Anaheim when we disembarked.  We had a great dinner with Dad and Risa at their favorite local thai place, and then it was back on the road for us on our short drive home.  We reconnected with the kiddos, unpacked, and headed to bed, happy to be back home even though we had a wonderful trip!

Later!

Amy