Wednesday

After running some errands in the morning, Ashley and I went to El Matador Beach just past Malibu.  This beach is known for the gigantic rocks and sand pillars.  

We did what we always do, ran around, took pictures, made each other laugh, and just enjoyed exploring. 

Access to the beach is limited except for these really steep old staircases.  

It was a beautiful day.

This is what I mean about people just building where they want to.. Who wouldn't want their luxury condo on this beach??

We kept driving down the PCH ( Pacific Coast Highway) and in about 1.5hrs we were in Santa Barbara.  I've talked about it before, you know, cute beach town. 

We drove around, got a motel room, then hit the beach. We spent a couple hours sitting, walking, watching waves and people, etc.  

 At one point, a bunch of sail boats started tipping over.  People were screaming and it got really chaotic.  It seemed like the boats got caught in some kind of strange wind or something.  As soon as they would right themselves, the boats would tip over again. There was a motor boat in the area as well that helped the people getting caught.  Then a little speed boat coast guard came and towed a few people to the dock.

There was a seal in the bay amongst the boats and people.  See it in the right hand corner of the 2nd pic?
It kept barking at them..I think it was a warning..

After sunset we went out to dinner at a small restaurant on the end of Stearns Wharf.  When we were finished we were talking about how tired we felt and that it must be "sooo late".  It was only 7:30. So we went to the beach.  It was a chilly 62 degrees :)

We played with glow sticks and listened to the black waves crashing.  I had a pack of sparklers left over from the 4th of July we were going to light on the beach, but I forgot matches.  So we went to the front desk and I had to convince the teenage boy working the desk that we weren't drunk or going to smoke pot..we were just two women wanting to play with sparklers...

The sparkler pack turned out to be full of duds. I guess it was kind of past their prime.  Later we we went into downtown Santa Barbara for some frozen yogurt. 

There was an electric fire place in the room, so we let it get cold in order to justify sleeping with the glow of an artificial flame. It was lovely.