Santa Barbara March 11, 2011

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Santa Barbara for the Solvang Century Bike ride. Calvin has talked about doing this ride ever since Rosie started school at UC Santa Barbara, but this year Rosie offered to ride it on a tandem with Calvin and he couldn't resist.  Sadly we have no pictures of the ride.  Our camera was tucked safely away in the car in Solvang, but not used the day of the ride. I opted for a day by the pool at out hotel.  (Solvang is a delightful town, but I have had occasion to tour it many times while Calvin has ridden his bike there.) I had a beautiful view of mountains, palm trees and blue skies from my lounge chair and I even thought about taking a picture, but once again with the camera tucked safely away in Solvang I missed the shot.
Calvin flew home very early Sunday morning and I stayed for another day to visit with Rosie. On Sunday afternoon we went to the Monarch butterfly reserve.  I have been fascinated with the migrating butterflies for years, but have never had a chance to actually see them.  I knew that they would gather in particular trees year after year, but I thought in my mind that the butterflies would replace the leaves on the trees, not gather in clusters, so the trees would look like they had butterfly leaves. It was not what I expected, but remarkable none the less.

This is a picture I took using the regular lens on our camera.  If you look really closely you can see a little patch of orange.

This is that same view using Rosie's telephoto lens.

I'm not a serious photographer, a couple of shots and I'm done.  Rosie makes a more serious effort.

We also took a short walk along the bluff.  Having grown up in Idaho, I never get tired of looking at the ocean.

And I never get tired of spending a peaceful Sunday afternoon with Rosie.