Hello everybody,
Haven't posted on the blog for a while so in order to keep my skills sharp, and to let everyone know we are still alive and well, I thought I'd post something new. On Tuesday 4/10/12 we decided to take a road trip up to Solvang because we had heard nice things about it and decided to combine that with my desire to scout out a 40 mile bike route up Mt. Figueroa in the town of Los Olivos, near Solvang.
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First stop Solvang
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| If you believe that you are looking at classic Danish architecture in the above and following photos, you just may be. |
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| The city of Solvang was founded as a Danish-American colony in 1911 with the purchase of nearly 9,000 acres of land from the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata land grant. |
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| The Danish style architecture become popular in new construction after World War II, while many of the established buildings simply had their facades restyled to look Danish. |
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| The village's four windmills are creations of Ferdinand Sorenson, a pioneer of the Danish Provincial style. |
Over all Solvang was nice but just a bit too touristy for me. After a bit of walking around and enjoying a treat from a local bakery (for me an apple fritter, for Volker a chocolate chip cookie) we moved on.
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Second stop Los Olivos
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Somewhere along the road to Los Olivos we passed an ostrich farm. This picture is a grab from the Ostrichland site because I didn't have my camera ready as we passed the farm, but I can assure you that even from about 100 yards ostriches are BIG birds. The attached link is to a video about Ostrichland.
One of our first stops after arriving in Los Olivos was this little eatery, Panino, with outdoor tables and great deli-sandwiches. The above and next two pictures are grabs from the Panino site. Not surprising, as we walked through town (and it is small) the majority of storefronts were for wine tasting establishments. Vineyards are big up here but I didn't take any pictures of the vineyards or wine tasting places. :(
Panino's simple interior, the menu featured salads, soups and about twenty sandwich selections.
On focaccia. :) |
Eventually we did find this garden shop with these huge wind chimes. They had a great sound and were not as noisy as their size might indicate.
Inside the gate to the garden shop we were greeted by this little guy; looks are deceiving, he really was friendly.
I know he looks like he just woke up with a hangover but that was really his look of satisfaction after giving himself a good scratch. In a way he looks like a character out of Star Wars movie, "Where's my light saber?"
A few more garden shop pieces.
Enough of the garden shop, we're ready for Mt. Figueroa, I think.
Oh yeah, one last thing, the Magpie. After leaving the garden shop I saw my first magpie. A yellow billed magpie to be exact. It's a little smaller than it's relative the black billed magpie, and doesn't have the same wing and tail color hews but I was so entranced by this sighting. Later in the day we began to see them everywhere.
As members of the crow family they are considered to be very intelligent and are able to mimic dogs, cats and people.
An interesting tidbit I read about them is that mated pairs will raise wings and then bow to each other, it's a behavior that is believed to strengthen the pair bond. Also, the male will feed the female during incubation.
Ok, enough Magpie pictures, now we're really moving on to Mt. Figueroa.
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From Los Olivos the route to Mt. Figueroa is pretty simple, take Figueroa Mountain Road. As a point of interest, it turns out that the entrance to Michael Jackson's Neverland is off of this road. We passed the entrance early on but because it is not marked we were not sure that it was the entrance until getting far beyond. The biking blog I used as a resource didn't give a clear indication of the location, no big deal though the property was all posted and we couldn't see anything from the road.
Coming out of Los Olivos, Figueroa Mountain Road is fairly tame in the pastural sense.
The pastures eventually gave way to slight sun speckled inclines populated by California oaks.
Eventually the sun cover dissolved as we began some earnest climbing.
A look back from whence we came.
Somewhere along the drive we got a little something extra to think about with a posting about mountain lions. Needless to say, this was on my mind every time I got out of the car to take pictures or scout the road ahead.
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Rounding a bend we got a glimpse of patches of orange on the hillside.
April is prime wildflower time on Mt. Figueroa and these California poppies were in full bloom.
The lupine weren't doing too bad either.
Me
Not sure how much this plays into the proliferation of the poppies in this area but fires are a constant threat here with results that could benefit plants that thrive in more open spaces.
Speaking of more open spaces, beyond the poppy fields we drove through a heavily forested area only to find another great vantage point.
Getting a better perspective, nice kitty.
From here Lake Cachuma came into view bearing East South East between our location and our condo in Goleta.
Closer.
And closer still, the mountains behind Lake Cachuma are the same ones that form the backdrop between Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean. At this point we are at about 3,000 feet and needing another 1,500 to reach the summit.
Now where did that kitty go to?
The same rock as in the previous picture but from a different perspective. This picture was the result of a second, on foot, scouting mission to explore the road ahead. Increasingly, the road was becoming narrower and with more steep drops down "unforgiving ravines" ( a euphemism for sure death). Based on the blog I had read I felt that the climb to the summit and descent down the other side was preferable to returning back the way we had come, as Volker wanted to do. He had no problem continuing up as long as he wasn't driving. Needless to say I drove the rest of the way and boy was I wrong about the rest of the drive.
The above and following two pictures are from other blogs depicting the road of our descent They do not and can not do justice to what it was like to drive a car down this narrow one lane road. Neither of us is fond of heights or being near the edges of things. I couldn't have driven down this road even a few years ago. I'm note even sure how I did it this time.
As can be seen, and in our case it was much worse, the road tends to be squeezed even more by rocks rolling down from the hillside above.
My mantra was, just stay focused on the road ahead of you, don't look down and breathe now and then. From about the 4,500 foot mark to about the 3,000 foot level that's what I did. Eventually the road became less narrow and the ravines more forgiving. We were fortunate that we didn't run into oncoming traffic on any of these roads because there was no way for two vehicles to pass on these narrow stretches. Granted there were some pullover places but if vehicles were to meet between them someone would have some backing up to do. Not a pleasant thought.
The above and following two pictures form a panorama (from left to right) of the mountain behind and some of the surrounding foothills towards the end of our descent.
Continuing down homeward bound.
THE END
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