Santa Barbara Botanical Garden

After a long morning at the zoo, we still decided to head to the Botanical Garden. There weren't a lot of flowers this late in the very hot season but the trails were nice and Andrew found lots of lizards to photograph. 

Through the redwoods

Very typical . . . me waiting for Andrew to take photos!

Cutie!

A little free library and sitting area.

Santa Barbara Zoo

The Santa Barbara Zoo is one our most favourite zoos and we stop here at least once every time we're in the area. It's small but very well laid out and has a few animals that you don't often see elsewhere. We always buy a membership which allows us to enter an hour before the general public. It's so nice to view the animals without dodging around too many other people. However, we did spend three hours there so got a bit of both!

As you can see from most of these photos, I really like getting "facial" views of the animals rather than the whole animal. I think it's much more interesting sometimes. 

It was hard to get any decent photos of these very quick moving otters! Although by the time we left the zoo, they'd tired themselves out and were sleeping all huddled together in a corner. 

The penguins were also difficult to photo due to rapid movements! 

I love how the zoo tags all the penguins with their name. There used to be a penguin named "Lucky" who had a damaged foot. The shoe company Teva made a sandal for him so he could walk better. Sadly, it seems like Lucky is no longer around.

This poison dart frog was plastered to the glass of his habitat which I thought looked humorous. 

The wallabies are a new addition to the zoo and you could walk through the area they were in so it was much nicer and easier to take photos. They are in the area that the elephants used to be in as both elephants have died of old age.

Also new to the zoo since we'd last been there are two very cute foxes from the Channel Islands. They were rescued as babies after their mother had been killed.

It doesn't seem like very many zoos have condors but the Santa Barbara Zoo is well known for them. 

Meerkats . . . so funny looking! They make me laugh every time!

Guess who! 

So tired! :-)

Pretty colors!

San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara

We've always liked San Luis Obispo so decided to stop there overnight. We stayed at the Garden Street Inn which is in a lovely old building. It was amazingly inexpensive and included a wonderful breakfast. 

Andrew went for a longer run but I stuck close by along the short creekside paths in the downtown area. It's not very long so I did a few laps and stopped each round and did some air squats and step ups to help get my workout in. Definitely some great scenery in this small area. 

"Yach Ka" (The Fish Steelhead)

Note the white egret at the bottom of the photo.

The are several bridges that can be used to cross the creek.
From ones like this to some large rocks to step across. 

I wanted to get a bit more distance on my run so went past the hotel and, up the street, came to this building totally covered in vines. 

We then headed over to Avila Beach for coffee at a waterfront cafe and to continue our way south. 

 

Pismo Beach and the Monarch Butterfly Grove wasn't too much further down the road and we loved seeing all the monarchs when we were in Mexico a couple years ago. There were just a few butterflies around (many more will arrive later in October) but there's a large education component to the grove, from learning how to provide a suitable environment for monarchs, to research projects that are being done to ensure their livelihood. The monarch population has decreased significantly over the years from about 230,000 in 1990-1991 to less than 23,000 in 2021-2022, and some recent years even lower. 

We still had some time to spare before getting to Santa Barbara, and found Presqu'ile Winery near Santa Maria to have a "picnic" lunch. Albeit in rather fancy surroundings! #vanlife ????  :-) 

Cape Disappointment and WA-OR Coastline

As we headed south along the Washington/Oregon coast it started to rain and kept it up on and off for a couple of soggy and foggy days. While it's not as nice as sunshine, it makes for some interesting views. 

We stayed overnight at Cape Disappointment and, in the morning between rain showers, went for a walk along the beach. The pelicans and seagulls were in abundance! Of course, they started to fly away as we got closer but this also made for some interesting photos. 

It continued to rain most of the morning but gradually we began to see some sunshine. 

We turned inland to start making our way around the chaos of San Francisco and suburbs and found a beautiful little campsite among the redwoods at Van Duzen Campground. Great place for a morning working out as well!