← Misc · March 2023 – June 2025

Four Short Trips to the Coast

Danish pastries in Solvang, an island weekend, a night in Santa Barbara, and a night by the dunes with Wangcai.

Not every trip from Los Angeles has to be a ten-hour drive. These four were short, close to home, and all by the sea: one day up the coast to Santa Barbara and Solvang, one weekend on an island, one afternoon up the coast, and one weekend from Santa Barbara down to the dunes at Oxnard. None of them had enough photos for a post of its own, so here they are together.

As with the other posts here, everything below is reconstructed from the camera roll: what was photographed, where, and at what minute. For these four trips most of the photos are my wife's. I took very few.

Santa Barbara and Solvang · March 2023

The earliest of these was a day trip, on Sunday, March 26, 2023. We drove up the 101 along the coast and were in downtown Santa Barbara by 1:27, where a white Moorish-style building on State Street was trimmed with colored tile and a green bay window. After lunch we went down to the water by Stearns Wharf, and at 2:56 the city and the Santa Ynez Mountains stood across the water. Just before four we stopped at the lagoon at UCSB.

Then we drove inland to Solvang, a town founded by Danish immigrants, with a windmill standing over a café patio.

By five we had a box of pastries, and at 5:21 a heart-shaped Danish with two jams. At 5:30 a pergola walkway was hung with wisteria in bloom.

We drove home down the 101, and at 7:09 the sun was setting in the side mirror.

Avalon, Catalina Island · April 2024

Avalon is the main town on Santa Catalina Island: a small, steep valley of houses and palms around a crescent-shaped harbor. We came over on the ferry on Saturday, April 20. At 1:42 pm it was swinging into Avalon Bay, past a round white building on the point.

That round white building is the Catalina Casino. Despite the name, it has never been a gambling hall: it holds a movie theater and a ballroom.

We stayed at the Hotel St. Lauren, on the hill above town (it is also in the hotels post). From there, at 2:09, the view ran down a street and over flat white roofs to the harbor, with a church bell tower just below.

Up into the hills

Cars are scarce in Avalon, and most visitors get around in golf carts, which is how we spent the next hour or so. The first stop, at 3:16, was a bluff on the road east of town, looking out over open water at a two-masted schooner lying at anchor. A few minutes later we were climbing Wrigley Terrace Road, which winds up the hill on the east side of the bay.

The road climbs high above the water. At 3:29 I took the photo below: the coastline beyond the edge of the harbor, and green hills dropping straight into deep-blue water. Five minutes later, from farther along the road, the whole bay opened out: rows of white boats on their moorings, the Casino on its point, and a flag on the slope below us.

Near the top, on the seaward side, a big eucalyptus leans out over the slope with a rope swing hanging from one branch, and a plain white cross stands at the edge.

Far below, a yellow semi-submersible was carrying a load of visitors along the shore. We took a semi-submersible tour ourselves the next day.

The Wrigley Memorial

From the hills we drove inland, up Avalon Canyon, to the Wrigley Memorial, at 4:14. It is a tall monument to William Wrigley Jr. at the head of the canyon, decorated with Catalina tile. Through the tall arch at the top you see only sky and a sliver of sea. Turn around and the tiled parapet frames the whole canyon, running down to the water.

Evening on the waterfront

By 4:49 we were back down on Front Street, the waterfront promenade, which on a sunny Saturday was full of people walking under the palms between the shops and the beach. Around five the light began to soften, and a long bank of cloud settled over the hills behind the harbor.

Dinner, around six, was at the Bluewater Grill on the waterfront: seared scallops on an orange sauce, among other things. When we came out, at 7:13, the moon was already up over the palms, a few days short of full, above the strings of bulbs and the houses on the hill.

Sunday: under the water

Sunday began grayer. The balcony view that morning, with a cruise ship anchored offshore, is in the hotels post. At 11:22 we walked out to the Casino: a ring of arches around the top, flags all along the roof, and the sea right up against its base.

At midday we took a semi-submersible tour from the pier. A semi-submersible is a boat whose cabin sits below the waterline, with windows down the sides, so you sit under the surface while the deck stays above it. Just off Avalon is a forest of giant kelp, and from 12:58 the windows were full of it: tall golden-brown stalks rising out of the blue, lit from above.

Then came the fish. At 1:10 a whole school was crowding the windows: big dark fish in front, and behind them dozens of smaller, speckled ones, kelp bass and others I can't name. The last photo of them, at 1:24, is the clearest: one large dark fish broadside to the window, with spotted bass all around it.

Back in the bay, at 1:36, the cruise ship from the morning was still at anchor: Holland America's Zaandam. We took the ferry back to the mainland around six. By 7:22 the fog had closed in, and the ferry was passing container ships off Long Beach.

A night in Santa Barbara · June 2024

We had been to Santa Barbara together once before, in March 2023, on the way to Solvang; my first visit was at the end of the first of the 2022 road trips, an evening on Stearns Wharf. This visit, on Wednesday, June 5, was an afternoon, an evening and one night, and only a handful of photos survive.

The first, at 2:44, is of an angel's trumpet in full bloom beside a building in town, hung all over with long yellow flowers like bells. At 3:07 we stopped for a pair of steamed bao.

In the evening we went down to the beach by Stearns Wharf. At 8:23, someone had left a mermaid in the sand: a sculpture of a woman lying on her front, her long hair spread out and a tail curling away behind her. Dinner, after nine, was at Loquita in the Funk Zone, the neighborhood of tasting rooms and restaurants between the freeway and the beach. We spent the night at the Hotel Virginia, a small Hilton Tapestry hotel downtown, and drove home the next day.

Santa Barbara and the dunes, with Wangcai · June 2025

A year later we went back, this time with Wangcai, who had come home that January. Lunch on Saturday, June 28, came with a tiki drink in a big glass, topped with an orchid and a charred half-shell of lime.

In the afternoon we stopped at Rolld Ice Cream in Paseo Nuevo, the open-air shopping street off State Street. Rolled ice cream is made on a frozen steel plate: the cream is poured out, mixed with the toppings, spread thin and scraped up into tight rolls, which are then stood on end in the cup. The board inside listed that week's rotating flavors, for June 28 to July 4, with Dubai chocolate pistachio among them. We sat outside on the brick patio, where Wangcai posed beside the cup with her tongue out.

Dinner, at 8:06, was a whole grilled fish with broccolini and a little pot of blistered cherry tomatoes. Then we drove down the coast in the dark to Oxnard, where we were staying at Zachari Dunes on Mandalay Beach, a Spanish-style resort that sits right on the dunes (it is in the hotels post too).

At 8:26 on Sunday morning, Wangcai was out on the balcony under the pergola, looking over the wall at the dunes, the palms and the sea. A quarter of an hour later the pool was still empty except for one seagull on the edge.

By 10:58 the sky was starting to clear, and the view from the window was of a wide, nearly empty beach, with palms planted along the top of the sand.

On the way home we stopped for lunch at Geoffrey's Malibu, which is built on a cliff above the Pacific Coast Highway. The terrace looks over the roofs of the beach houses below and a bank of bougainvillea to the ocean, and lunch was the house paella.

By evening we were back home. Four trips, none longer than one night away: a day of pastries in Solvang, an island, an afternoon on the beach, and a weekend with the dog, all within easy reach of Los Angeles.

Maps built from the trips' photo timestamps and locations. Photo locations have been removed from the published images. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors; each stop is placed where its photo was taken, home is never marked, and the dashed lines show the order of stops, not the exact roads.

Some photos in this post are my wife's.