On Monday, 1 July 2019, we set out from Melissa's house in Los Angeles for Solvang, CA. Solvang is not far, so we got to see Melissa's extensive gardening accomplishments before we set out.
We headed more or less due west to start our travels from Malibu. We had lunch at a nice little place called Sunset on the famous beach at Point Dume, then drove north through Oxnard and Ventura, through Santa Barbara to Gaviota, then turned inland for Solvang.
The northward drive was though well-familar territory, so we mostly caught up with Melissa. We have taken many trips to California, and most of them start in Los Angeles and head north.
I didn't take many photos except this one to show the common brown hills of southern California. Over the course of the next few days, we saw many different terrains and environments!
Solvang was founded in 1911 by Danish immigrants who had found the midwest winters too harsh for their liking, so they pooled their resources and bought a huge property in as-yet undeveloped California, and built a Danish town.
Now Solvang is something of a "shopper's paradise", with block after block of boutiques and cafes. In these cafes, of course, you can get good Danish pastries, but I stuck to coffee and people-watching while Lorna and Melissa went shopping.
The bakery where I stayed was beside this windmill. The iced coffee was very good, and there was a power outlet so I could settle in for an extended period of hyper-caffeination while I set up my files for recording the expedition. On trips like this, I try to keep up with our experiences for this blog, on Facebook, and in TripAdvisor (over 700 reviews!) and Yelp!, and maybe Booking.com, more or less in that order (that is, I might not get to the last few). I stuck with it pretty well until we left civilization off the coast of British Columbia and lost contact with the outside world. I hope you enjoy reading about the adventure, and it inspires you to a similar adventure.