Home Sweet Home Santa Barbara

After spending countless hours searching for a dog-friendly apartment in Santa Barbara, we finally found one close to UCSB. So, we took a road trip to check out the apartment. The apartment is in a quiet area of the ever-so-loud party town Isla Vista. It's 3 blocks from a variety of restaurants, surrounded by parks and fields, 5 blocks to the campus, and 6 blocks to the beach. We were impressed with the size of the apartment, so we headed back to San Diego and packed up.

On our way back to San Diego, we stopped in Torrance to attend Trev's family get together. I enjoyed meeting the family members and Trev entertained all of the kids with the Xbox Kinect (he's going to be an amazing teacher!). Here are some photos: click here.

We moved into our new apartment this past weekend. My dad came up to help us with some of the moving and we explored the area. We took our bikes on an off-road trip around the UCSB lagoon (ending up on the beach and we had to carry the bikes on our shoulders down a steep hill to find the trail again) and found a secluded Marine Biology lab where we saw giant sea stars, sea urchins, and many other sea animals found in the nearby kelp beds. We finally made our way onto the coast bike route which is separate from the street and a beautiful ride to downtown Santa Barbara. We passed Goleta Beach and made it to Hope Ranch (where the bike route turned into a pedestrian, equestrian, and bike route because there were horses everywhere), before turning around and heading back to campus. Photos (click here).

We also visited Solvang. We took the back road into the mountains and by a beautiful lake on the way there. Solvang is a quite a sight - Denmark in the middle of the mountains! We enjoyed visiting all of the shops and posing for photos by all of the statues/signs.

So here we are in Santa Barbara for the next 4-5 years. I start my Ph.D. in Education program at UCSB on September 22nd. Until then, Trev and I will continue exploring the area.