Santa Barbara Bay At Dawn
When I was living in Williamsburg, work required me to spend a week or two in Santa Barbara to deal with a vendor. I was working with the Federal government at the time and had to travel under government rules.
I forget the details now, but there was a flight sequence I could use to fly from the Williamsburg airport (PHF) (about 10 miles from home) to Santa Barbara (SBA). One advantage is that PHF was only a few miles from home and the vendor would provide transportation from SBA.
But the government wants to save money.
To save $50 on the flight ticket, I had to fly out of Norfolk (ORF) to Los Angeles (LAX). This required me to drive 40+ miles to ORF (at 50¢/mile), rent a car at LAX (~ $200/day+mileage), drive to Santa Barbara (100 miles), let the rental car sit for the 10 days or whatever I was there (the vendor drove me around – easier to get through the gate), then drive back to LAX (another 100 miles on the rental) … and, because of flight times, rent a hotel room at LAX at $200/night. Then drive back to Williamsburg once I arrived at ORF.
But the government saved $50 on the flight.
I did enjoy my time in Santa Barbara though. I wandered down to the harbor at sunup and got this photo. Dark … but I like it.
I can enjoy the shore but I’m still a desert/mountains type.
I’m the opposite. I can enjoy the desert and mountains but I love the shore, doesn’t have to be the seashore, lakes or even rivers are where I want to be.
Grew up in Great Lakes country but took to the deserts not long after I first entered them in my 20s.
Plenty of pretty shore in FL. I’ve never seen desert. Do mountains in W.Va. count if only driven through?
Love the photo.
Never seen the desert? You ought to give us a try.
heh, ok but read reply to DT 🙂
Well now … Florida is a desert of a different type; so is New York City. 🙂
But you need to get west of the Rockies. For that matter, you need to get into the Rockies (and Sierra). Stand next to a 40-foot tall saguaro cactus (the ones with the arms) in Arizona, wander the red canyons of Utah, the Joshua tree forests of California, the wide open and sagebrush-filled basin and range of Nevada … just as a beginning.
FL and NYC …different type of desert..?
I have serious aversions to critters. The kind that bite and sting that are found in huge quantities (in my mind, anyway) in deserts. I’d have a difficult time enjoying the view while constantly watching where my feet are landing. I’m nearly a virgin when it comes to travel and adventure (can one be “nearly” a virgin?).
I think I’d need to rely on a sympathetic, knowledged guide to lead me through new territory. And, don’t even think about telling me I’ll need to sleep in a tent. Peeing outside is not on my to do list. either.
You wouldn’t need a tent in summer … better to watch the sky … and there’s plenty of sage to pee behind. Just like peeing inside.
You know … we are civilized out here. We don’t even use corncobs anymore (aren’t any around here anyway), we have catalogs to use 🙂
The rattlesnakes in Florida are bigger than the ones in Arizona … and can hide in the grass. No alligators out this way either.
catalogues…what a clever idea! 🙂
In the desert, the critters are far apart, there’s not a lot of food. The snakes come out at night looking for mice and bugs, as do the scorpions. The coyotes look for cottontails and mice. We grew up on tales of snakes creeping into sleeping bags, but I never met anyone that had it happen to them. During the day the critters repair to their cool hidey holes, the cottontails to their nests in thick brush and cacti. I’ve slept on the ground in the desert: just lay out a tarp, and your blankets or sleeping bag on top of that. Try not to think of scorpions and spiders and cone-nosed kissing bugs and go to sleep. These days I prefer one of those lightweight tents that’s all bug screen for an inner wall, with an outer rain fly for inclement or cold weather.
I still shake my boots/shoes thoroughly in the morning before I put them on. Who knows what crawled in there during the night?
Everything in the desert is thorny or scratchy or bites. It’s no big deal, with practice a person can move through easily and swiftly.
And the whole world is a toilet. Scratch out a hole behind a bush, do your business, cover it up and walk on. Nobody will look, they are admiring the view in all the other directions.
I used to sleep directly on the ground with a tarp or blanket – or just a sleeping bag, but I’ve taken to sleeping in the bed of the pickup. No particular reason why … Never had a problem with snakes or bugs.
There’s a book out – I think it was meant as a semi-joke at first but the 4th edition seems “serious” now: “How to Shit in the Woods“. Scoop and poop basically. My God – “recommendations for equipment such as special trowels” Special trowels???
In my first assignment in the Air Force, I instructed in T-38 (Picture attached, but back in my day, they were all white).
I mention all that because in my last year of that assignment, I was giving checkrides to students. And I took all my Navigation Checkrides out to Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Space Force Base), near Santa Barbara. There were several reasons for this…..
1. There was never anyone else out there. I could get all the required approaches and not have to be fit in between others.
2. The runway was enormous. A long runway is usually no more than 11-12,000′ long, but the runway at Vandenberg is 15,000. I think that the only other runways that long are at Edwards AFB and Kennedy Space Center….anywhere that the Space Shuttle might have landed.
3. But by far, the most important reason was that at the Snack Bar, I could get a burger and a made-with-real-ice-cream milkshake. We all have our priorities.
Hm-m-m … dark places … road to the high ground, so to speak 🙂
When the weathers right, and sometimes when it’s not, my wife lives on milkshakes. She had a Hamilton Beach when I met her and she has one now, but not the same one. I think she’s on the 4th or 5th one now. They don’t make em like they used to.
Breyer’s vanilla (with the teeny black specks) and a big gob of Hershey’s chocolate. I don’t mind them neither, but I think she gets maniacal over them. I mean, come on man, 5 machines????
ghost, a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.
Being an Air Force pilot must’ve been a great experience. I cannot even begin to picture what flying so fast while trying to keep the plane on course, etc. would be like. I have only known two military pilots in my time, J. Richard Niemela and Nelson Trickett. Both were great thinkers and true patriots. azlibertarian, glad to read your opinions.
My time in the AF was a great beginning to a great career and I was fortunate for having done it.
I grew up in Glendale, CA. It was the 1950’s and anyone 15 1/2 could drive. We got our license the day we turned 16. From there it was an easy and quick drive up the coast. West on Sunset Blvd. to the coast and North up the coast past Zuma to Santa Barbara. We were that particular generation of kids which did that drive frequently. Then they opened up the freeway I-5. For the first two or three years it was almost empty! The drive south to Newport Beach/Balboa Island (beach boys) was 50 miles. I was 16 for gosh sake! Waited tables after school and went to the beach on Sunday. Life was good until the smog arrived–and it arrived fast and furious. The freeway opened in September 1957 and by June 1961 i could not see across the street for the smog, which is why I moved to Laguna.