Beach, wine, beach

Day two of our California trip included 5 wine tastings sandwiched between two beach trips.  Wonderful!

We hit El Capitan State Beach, north of Santa Barbara, by 9:30 am. Here I spied a clump of rocks, which meant one thing – tide pools!

Lisa and I walked among the rocks looking at the pebble-covered anemones and barnacles and caught glimpses of the mini crabs as they scurried under mussels and rocks to hide themselves from us. I couldn’t get enough – I loved all of it! We even spotted a few starfish!

We eventually wandered back to the towels and took in the sounds of the ocean and the relatively quiet beach (not too many people), we read our books and Lisa got in the water. Next we headed out for our wine tastings! 

First stop: Solvang, which is a small town in the Ynez Valley with a strong Danish influence. Here wineries are nestled among the Disney-like Danish windmills and authentic bakeries and tee shirt shops and other cute places.  Our favorite spot was the Dascomb winery – they had good wine *and* they paired it with micro-cubes of amazing cheese. Here are a few shots from our wine tasting times in Solvang:

After lunch we moved on to Los Olivos – a town that is just about all wine tasting rooms. We were challenged with how to choose among all the different wineries. We were lured into Saarloos + sons by the attached cupcake case. The wine was ok and I didn’t turn out to be attracted to any of the cupcakes, but we did enjoy this little photo booth thing they had. Here is one of the photo outcomes:

By far, our favorite stop was Refugio Ranch. The wine was good and the feel was laid back. If I could have wine from one place again, it would be here.

After this last wine stop, we grabbed some jalapeno-cheddar popcorn and a pellegrino and headed back to El Capitan State Beach. This time it was just playing in the water and laying on the beach as the sun retreated. It was so nice…