This is our last day of our camping reservation at Rancho Oso TT in the Santa Ynez Valley. I had some maintenance items to take care of prior to departure but procrastinated instead and went for a spin around the valley area. We drove to 154 northbound but turned east just past the dam at Lake Cachuma and wandered around the countryside east of Santa Ynez and Los Olivos. Many really gorgeous estates dot the roadside and it’s easy to see why very rich folks live here. It is gorgeous.
Peggy found her way through this part of the county despite the map reading and interpretation by her husband. After a bit, we arrived back at 154 for a short drive up to Ballard Canyon where we turned south back down this road for the second time in a week. We liked it last time and found we liked it this time, too. There are gorgeous vineyards and tidy horse ranches along the road and the views are great although the road itself is narrow and curvy.
At the south end of Ballard Canyon, we emerged in Buellton, bought diesel and returned through Solvang back to our campground. I finally got after the maintenance stuff I should have done this morning and actually finished before dark. The truck now has a recently cleaned and oiled K&N air filter replacing the factory filter it had, my black and grey tanks are squeaky-clean, our water tank has a good amount in it and some of the trailer stabilizers are collapsed and stowed. We should be able to beat a hasty retreat in the morning on our way to the Paso Robles area.
We shot a couple photos you can see if you click here

Today we went nowhere. We had no plans and we followed them carefully. I did have a fascinating time dumping the black and gray tanks in the trailer. Peggy and I conspired to put a little plastic shelf thing she bought in Solvang the other day onto the back of one of our cabinet doors. I applied oil to the surface of a K&N air filter I will be putting in the truck tomorrow. I unsuccessfully tried to fix one of the key chain remotes for the truck but I think my supplies of batteries may be getting old because their doesn’t seem to be any current coming out of them. Peggy got some sewing done. We may be boring.
Late in the day, Peggy got inspired and whipped up some great banana and chocolate chip muffins which may kill me. Whatta way to go.

Our original intent for today was to drive into Santa Barbara’s De La Guerre Street to check out the Santa Barbara Historical Museum. We bailed off 101 in town and wound our way through the upscale town roads to the location of the museum but parking was a problem, particularly since the streets seem to mostly be one-way which means you are virtually unable to come back for a spot you identified without taking a six block detour only to return to the location and find some other savvy driver has scooped up the place.
After a bit, we bailed and decided to go down and check out Santa B’s waterfront. We dawdled for a while but ultimately found a parking place in the city’s $2 per hour outdoor parking lot just a short walk from the big concrete breakwater that surrounds the marina. Some guy was having a boat he had allegedly bought in Croatia placed into the ocean using a neat mobile boat crane-thingy. After watching the boat go in, we turned around and noted that the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum was right behind us. We popped into the gift shop, paid the $5 a head entrance fee and went in to peruse the collection.
The museum is pretty tiny but very well done. They had exhibits about the Point Conception Lighthouse, marine navigation, surfing, tattoos, scrimshaw, maritime ranches, commercial fishing and diving, a U.S. Navy disaster at Honda Point where a whole bunch of Navy ships drove into the rocks because they didn’t want to argue with the bozo in charge of navigation, a periscope, the Santa Barbara oil spill back in ’69, cannons from ancient ships and some other neat stuff.
From the 2nd floor of the Maritime Museum, if you look east you will see the Endless Summer, a bar/restaurant in the same building. We decided to give it a try and went over for a beer, lobster bisque and Caesar Salad. The food was okay tasting but inexpensive and the beers were good because I got a local ale and Peg had a Guinness. We finished up and headed out to the parking lot where the little troll at the booth made me part with $8.
Other than a stop at the local Fart & Smile, we headed back over the mountains to our camping spot in the Santa Ynez Valley. At the top of the ridge, we ran into rain even though the weather man said it was going to be clear and warm up. He may have been fibbing because it is raining and down around freezing at night. Liar.
You will find some photos of today’s fun if you click here

Other than taking a walk around the campground, we mostly just stayed in the trailer because it was quite chilly outside and breezy, too. During our walk we checked out the campground adult lodge, regular lodge and strolled over to a building that is sort of made to look like a church or schoolhouse. I can say for a fact that the church foundation and deck framing are definitely substandard and I’d stay off of them.
Everything else we did today was unremarkable so I’ll quit here. See you tomorrow.

We keep our ears fixed to weather reports as we travel and yesterday the reports indicated that stormy weather was on the way. They were right. It started light rain at about 5:00 AM today and got heavier as the sun rose. By about 10:00 AM, it was raining in excess of an inch per hour and the poor civil engineering of Rancho Oso reared its ugly head. Runoff was moving rocks up to about 4″ happily downhill in the numerous uncontrolled streams that formed everywhere. Rain was so heavy sometimes that our satellite TV antenna would lose signal for some of the time.
After about four hours of heavy rain, the rain quit and the cold wind started up with gusts of maybe 30 mph. Since the rain had quit, Peggy and I decided to take a drive around the area to check out any damage from the storm. We ended up driving through quite a few drainage issues on the campground road where water had jumped the roadside ditch and spread tons of rock and soil onto the pavement in numerous locations.
We drove from the end of the campground road up Paradise Road and the Santa Ynez River but had only gone about a mile before encountering a big government-looking barricade across the highway due to a flooded concrete low-water crossing and slides along the road. Peggy got out of the truck to snap a few photos and overheard a woman stopped at the gate who indicated she lived upstream but it looked like the only way she was getting home today was through swimming and walking.
We returned to our cozy trailer and hunkered down for the rest of the day. Since the rain has backed off, TV reception is back so we can watch old westerns until we can’t stand it anymore. The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow but we don’t want to watch political news because they mostly show the disgusting prick Donald Trump all the time, just like the twit had something important to say while badmouthing everyone who disagrees with him. I hope the American people are not foolish enough to put this goon in power. I shudder to think about how quickly the poor will get poorer, the rich richer and the brain-dead more powerful should this coiffure-challenged real estate salesman and loudmouth get elected.

Neither one of us had ever been to Lompoc, CA, before despite driving by on US-101 numerous times in the past. I learned in school that Lompoc was home to the world’s largest deposits of diatomaceous earth and maybe that’s why I had never gone that way. In any event, we decided to pop on over that way just to see what was there.
We started by driving back to CA-154 northbound until we reached a roundabout where we could go west on CA-246 through Santa Ynez and Solvang where we picked up some cheap diesel fuel before continuing across US-101 and toward the coast, Vandenburg (the town) and Vandenburg (the military facility). Probably due to recent rains, the countryside along the highway was just gorgeous with large expanses of emerald green pastures and hills. It reminded me of Ireland which is strange because I have never been to the British Isles but it did look like I speculate Ireland may look.
We drove through Lompoc which is a nice little community with dreadful traffic management caused primarily by traffic signals which seemed to be permanently red in all directions. The traffic is not quite as horrible as Solvang but there is not much to see in Lompoc and maybe that’s why cursing from motorists is not as prevalent.
After spending an inordinate amount of time in Lompoc at a dead stop, we turned south on CA-1 which is bordered by spectacular scenery. We were obliged to pull over a few times to allow those less appreciative of the surroundings pass us. CA-1 wanders around the south side of Point Conception for a ways before intersecting US-101 at Gaviota, north of Santa Barbara. On the way south, we tried a route called Refugio Road but the road started out crummy and went downhill as we progressed. If we had a four wheel drive or motorcycles we may have been able to use Refugio but we didn’t so after about 3 miles, we chickened out and turned around headed back to 101. We turned south on 101 until we could again turn north on CA-154 and return to our campground in the Santa Ynez Valley. It was a very nice drive today.
There are some pix if you click here

Not much on the agenda today. We did some insurance research about the benefits of moving our vehicle registration to South Dakota where we have a legal residence, i.e. a mail box. We had heard from numerous RVers that South Dakota had no state income tax and vehicle registrations and insurance were supposed to be cheap there. Last year we acquired a mailing address in South Dakota while passing through as a preamble to moving our legal residence there.
Peggy has been doing most of the research about insurance and registration and today she got it all onto a spreadsheet where we could get some comparisons. As it turns out, we would need to purchase real estate in South Dakota to get Obamacare (highly subsidized)insurance there. That was not going to happen primarily because we get such a great deal from Covered California. As it turns out, auto and trailer insurance was not cheaper in South Dakota than the current policies we have in California. The state tax issue also went away since the low taxes in California for folks with lousy retirement incomes are offset by the cheap medical insurance to an extent greater than moving to South Dakota and paying substantially more for medical insurance. Apparently, we are just a couple of hicks with a nifty mailing address in South Dakota but a primary residence in California.
I spent part of the day cleaning out a K&N air filter for Charlotte and, once I finish all the preparation, will replace the air filter we installed last year in New Berlin, Pennsylvania. Gotta keep Charlotte breathing easily if I want to continue to enjoy her wonderful horsepower.

Exploration was the task for today and we were delighted, especially after doing some miserable but necessary maintenance yesterday. We had some great home-cooked versions of Egg McMuffins for breakfast and I can unequivocally state that ours are better than Mickey Dee’s. Ours had the benefit of non-transparent ham steak pieces, bacon, an egg with the proper amount of yolk, Tillamook extra sharp cheddar and pan-fried English Muffins. I’m quite sure they were bad for me but tasty nonetheless.
After chow, we piled into Charlotte and drove the 5 miles back to CA-154 and headed south up to San Marcos Pass. There we turned east Camino Cielo, which turned out to be a very curvy and quite steep series of roads bordered on both sides with absolutely stunning scenery. Peggy was the original driver but she elected to turn the driving chores over to me once she had driven up the road a bit. Peggy ain’t real skookum on driving on narrow, serpentine roads with dropoffs alongside that would surely mean death if the driver were to accidentally veer from the straight-and-narrow. The road has very sharp curves and sightlines around the corners are so short that almost a complete stop is required before creeping slowly around the bends. Almost unfortunately, we did encounter a couple small cars coming too fast the other way and got to enjoy their horror-filled faces as they realized they were going to run into the grill of a 3/4 ton pickup without terrifying correction alongside the tops of very unforgiving cliffs. Nobody wrecked but I’ll wager they got to clean out their trousers when they got home.
Camino Cielo does have a redeeming feature, however. The road runs directly on top or right next to the ridge separating Santa Barbara and the coast from the inland Santa Ynez Valley. Views to each side are magnificent. On the south side, the cities of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Isla Vista border the Pacific and right offshore the Channel Islands are plainly evident. On the north side, the entire Santa Ynez Valley and surrounding mountains are the treat. In the distance, looking east, we could see some snow-capped peaks that appeared to be about 25 or 30 miles distant. Our campground is at an elevation a bit below 1000 feet but by the time we were driving on the ridge we were approaching 4000 foot elevation. The skies were clear. We probably could not have selected a better day for this little spin.
At the far end of the ridge, we descended into Summerland after stopping by the house my grandparents lived in on Hot Springs Road in Montecito. We returned back to our temporary home via US-101 and CA-154 to Rancho Oso.
Two pictures are available if you click here

Today was a maintenance day for the Barbarian Invader. We have had a slide-out room gasket loose and fouled up since right after we bought the trailer and the time had finally come to fix it with some very effective but extremely messy sealant we bought in Ohio last year.
If the bean counters at the manufacturing facility had let the builders use proper sealants when they built the trailer, this repair effort would not have been necessary. Instead, during manufacture the builders elected to use no sealant whatsoever and gaskets suspended from above using only friction to keep them in place soon were overwhelmed by simple gravity and fell from their perches.
One of the reasons why the builders did not use sealants is they are extremely difficult to apply in-place unless you are less than 5″ in height, have more than the usual issue of elbows and wrists and/or were a previous circus contortionist. After clearing all our stuff out of the way, we collapsed the slide-outs to a position where we could work on them and we started. Considerable grunting and cursing ensued, followed by hurried clean-ups of sealant accidentally ejected from a large tube while application to the nearly invisible target was attempted. After some time, we believed we had finished but found some problems when we attempted to return the slide-outs to their extended position.
Again the slide-outs were retracted and after some additional applications, spills, cursing, finger-crossing and application of pure will, the slide-outs were again returned to their extended positions without apparent issue. I just hope I have not sealed the slide-outs in their extended position permanently. I’ll let you know when we need to move on February 5.

It is wonderful to be back on the road. Little, bitty things can become whole-day activities and we don’t feel even a slight amount of remorse over possibly getting nothing done on any particular day. It is joyous.
Today we drove up Stagecoach Road near our campground and continued under the Cold Springs Bridge, what was the longest steel girder span in the state when it was finished in 1964. CA-154 is carried on that span. Also up Stagecoach Road is the Cold Springs Tavern where, according to their ads, “Dusty stagecoaches stopped here 120 years ago.” It looks like they might be right as there are some tiny, rustic buildings with crummy foundations lodged in a sliver of a ravine. Parking here is at a premium if you are the fifth car to arrive.
We continued onto CA-154 back down the hill to the Santa Barbara area where we connected with US-101 to a Costco in Goleta. After some strategic grocery shopping, we sat down outside the store for Polish dogs and Caesar Salads before continuing with our drive. Unfortunately for me, almost as soon as I stuffed the Polish dog down my grocery hole, I was seized by an unpleasant and powerful gastric distress so we pulled over at a diesel stop where I was able to reach the john with only moments to spare. I’m glad it wasn’t one of those service stations w/o restrooms.
Explosion averted, we headed back over the pass to Rancho Oso with our loot, taking the Stagecoach Road detour a second time. It is a very nice albeit extremely narrow road but the scenery is spectacular for the passenger. The driver should mind his task because driving even a little off the road here would be fatal and there are no guardrails. On the last bit of Paradise Road near our campground we did get to see a group of about 7 big wild turkeys and they were all colored up in their best plumage. Seems pretty plain why Benjamin Franklin thought these birds should be our national emblem. They are gorgeous.
A couple pix are available if you click here