Southern California

This past weekend, my friend Kristin came in to town. We rented a car and took off down Highway 1 south and drove all the way from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles on Highway 1. For some reason, all of my friends who have never visited California think of it as nothing but sunny beaches and bikini babes, etc. etc. But driving Highway 1 south of Santa Cruz was anything but sandy beaches. It basically rivaled, and I dare say exceeded, the Blue Ridge parkway in terms of its beauty.

We stuck around for a night in Northern L.A. and drove around Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Hollywood for a morning - enough to say we've been and have seen what it's all about. We were essentially being tourists. We then took off to Santa Barbara for the rest of the weekend and did some major relaxing and ate some great Mexican and Indian food, as well as drinking lots of really good coffee. Santa Barbara was by far one of the coolest towns I've ever visited. Extremely clean and relaxed downtown, sits on the beach, lots of great little restaurants, and not very crowded at all.

I may have some pictures soon. Of course, I still live in the stone age and use disposable cameras for all my pictures, so you'll have to wait until I finish the roll and then go get all of them developed. One day I may invest in a digital camera just for this purpose... or not :)