Rain

And there I go jinxing it again; no sooner than I bragged about our beautiful and beach-worthy sunny weather, in blew the biggest storm the central coast of California has seen in at least the past four years. These videos of the aftermath absolutely BLEW.MY.MIND.

Daisy is unsure about the downpour and the creeks that used to be trails // before I was soaked to the bone

And of course, we decided to "suit up" as best as we could and go hiking in the middle of it. Because naturally, hiking in the mountains of our mudslide-prone area during the biggest storm we've ever seen is just what you do.

It was absolutely beautiful, don't get me wrong! I mean, lately, we've gotten used to seeing landscapes that look brown and parched, like this and this and this. So some greenery was a welcome change. But when the creeks swell up so much that they can be classified as rivers, and when large sections of the trail get washed away when parts of the upper mountain come sliding down, it gets interesting.

a large missing section of the trail, when a boulder washed away down a ravine

our hydro-phobic dog was less than thrilled about crossing flooded parts of the trail.

Also, although Tim was suited up in totally waterproofed snow gear, I was sporting Tim's old snow pants (like, from when he was 10, and hasn't been scotch-guarded since) and a nice and toasty fleece-lined raincoat--with a tear in it. Said hole wasn't discovered until halfway through our hike, when I couldn't figure out why I was wringing buckets of water out of the fleece lining as I walked. 

Still, the trails were lovely, and the occasional (like, three second) breaks in the downpour revealed stunning views. I do love these mountains of ours.

We tried to get a photo of the three of us, but our little camera, though waterproof, was less than ideal in rainy conditions. Foggy lens and focusing on raindrops for the win! Also, by this point I was soaked to the bone and didn't much care to keep trying to document our little adventure.

We called it quits less than a mile up the trail from our car ;).

Thrilled that we stopped hiking in the rain!

Of course, now it's sunny and 75* again, and aside from some soggy grass in front of the beachfront hotels and a few sailboats washed up on the beach, you'd never know anything happened ;). 

Did it storm this weekend where you are?  What's your favorite thing to do when it rains?

Just some pictures of another hike we took this weekend :)

 

Our hike this time took us through some of the area damaged by the Tea fire our Junior year of college.  So many trees were still blackened and scarred, even five years later!

 We had a little picnic under the shelter of a wayward oak.

An overlook of our beautiful town. We could see all the way to the ocean, but the picture doesn't do the view justice. This picture also screams of our desperate need for rain--normally this time of year these hills are lush and green! 

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a hike for my valentine

Hi all! I hope you had a fantastic weekend (those of you still on your three-day weekend: boo! Tim had to work today so it's back to life as usual in this house). Did you do anything fun for Valentine's day? Like I said earlier, we don't usually celebrate Valentine's day on the 14th. There are a few reasons to this sort of odd tradition, but the main one is due to our current location.

Tim and I are not really huge crowd people--we can deal with it in small doses but it just tends to stress us out. Gaah! Anyway, with President's day AND Valentine's day falling on the same weekend, people FLOCK to Santa Barbara for romantic getaways. Sweet, and great for tourism I'm sure, but not so great for our neuroses haha. Rather than going to our favorite splurge-y restaurants this year, we went on a sunset hike one day and a picnic the next. There's little my husband likes doing more than exploring the outdoors of this lovely town which we call home. 

Our Valentine's night "hike" was mostly on roads but it took us to a spot above our college campus where you can see all of town. We've gone there a few times since graduation a few years ago, but the last time I'd been was back in 2012 at the end of summer.

 

It's a pretty easy hike but the roads wind back and forth up the side of the mountain, so it's definitely a calf workout! We passed some pretty spectacular and unique Montecito home on the way up, which is always cool. The one above has a wavy mosaic roof! Trippy.

We reached the peak of the mountain at precisely the right moment to enjoy panoramic views of our town at golden hour. Spectacularly breathtaking.

W

 

Thanks to some wild volunteer plants growing on the side of the road, I have two more funky succulents  to add to my quickly-growing collection! haha that spiky one was a pain to carry all the way down the mountain--and yes that pun was intended :)

We cut through campus trails to get back to our car, which is always fun too. One of our first "dates" before we officially started dating was a hike on these same trails :)