Our Three Weeks at Rancho Oso

We have spent the past three weeks camped at Rancho Oso Thousand Trails and have totally enjoyed this location. As you can see, we are in the hills and totally surrounded by the Santa Ynez National Forest. If you double click on the picture and enlarge it, you should see us, the brown motorhome, on the back row.

We are about 20 miles from the Santa Barbara beaches and wharfs in one direction and about 20 miles from the wineries of Solvang and Los Olivos. For us, that is best of both worlds.

The weather here has been almost perfect. The nights are cool and the days are warm. I guess I could complain since the nights are almost tooooo cool in the 50's and the days are almost tooooooo warm in the 90's. But that has worked out well for us. Each day we would sit outside drinking coffee while the weather is cool. We would take our walks and relax. And then by around noon we would prepare to go for an outing. And then return by around five'ish when it cools down and we can enjoy our glass of wine outside. And Bailey is loving this schedule, too.

We also took a drive on a windy road into the mountains to view the Chumash Indians wall paintings.

This was a magnificient example of Indian drawings; all of the work in this cave was done in color, mainly red.

We have never seen drawing so clear and well preserved as these.

Solvang is a Danish community with many restuarants serving Danish cuisine. We went to Paula's Pancake house and had these pancakes that were as large as the plate and as thin as paper. We got the ones that were sprinkled with powdered sugar but there were others with syrup, rasberries, sausage, strawberries. They were absolutely delicious. I ordered the Danish sausage on the side. It had a sweet taste. We enjoyed it so much that we purchased some to take home with us.

There are so many wineries in this area that there is no way for us to go to them all. We did discover that some of the wineries were just tasting rooms in Solvang, Los Olivos or Santa Ynez. Each of these are small towns within 10 miles of each other.

We chose not to go to the tasting rooms but to go to the wineries themselves. The entrances and the grounds were beautifully landscaped and were surrounded but what seemed like miles of vineyards. We went to the Firestone winery and the Bridlewood winery. And of course we purchased several bottles of wine from each. What fun that was. By the way, if you get a chance to sample Firestone wine, you may want to try it. We love both the white and the red wines from this winery.

As you can see, I have not mentioned the beaches of Santa Barbara. We went to the beaches several times, took walks along the beaches as well as brought our blanket and spent an afternoon reading and watching the waves. We also went to the wharf and harbor to have a drink and appetizers. And each time we went I did not bring my camera. So no pictures of the water. All that will have to wait until we return.

Tomorrow we leave and head north to Pismo Beach. We will spend two days there at a rv park right on the beach. Really looking forward to that.

Love and hugs. Stay healthy,

Linda and Barb