LA...Day 3

Friday 2-20

Santa Barbara County Courthouse

We started the day by heading to Santa Barbara. There was lots of free parking all around town, just keep an eye on the time, we were warned that the parking ticket rates are very high. After parking, we visited the Santa Barbara County Courthouse for a free one hour tour. The courthouse is Spanish Colonial Revival style and was completed in 1929. The previous courthouse was destroyed by an earthquake. The Spanish-Moorish “palace”, as it is known, has a clock tower that you can climb up, or take the elevator, which provides 360 degree views of the surrounding landscape. Lucky us, we got there pretty close to when the tour starred at 10:30am. The tour was really good and informative.
 

After walking around the downtown shopping area, we headed to the water front for lunch at the “Lucky Penny”. The building is covered in pennies and looks really neat. For lunch, we had the wood-fired brick oven three cheese pizza and homemade chips – very tasty!  After lunch, we went to Sterns Wharf and walked around the waterfront area. We visited the Channel Islands National Park Outdoors Santa Barbara Visitor Center site, which was great. There were couches to sit for you to spend time looking out at the marina. Other than the views, there was not much of anything else at the visitor center.  The building that housed the NP site also houses the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, which we did not visit.

Channel Islands National Park Outdoors Santa Barbara 

Heading back towards LA, we made a pit stop at the Robert J. Lagomarsino Visitor Center at Channel Islands National Park in Ventura. The visitor center had a bookstore, a 25 minute park movie and some displays.  Inside, there was a display of marine aquatic life and a really neat five story (stairwell) exhibit of what could be seen at each level of the sea floor which was rather interesting. Once to the roof, you were rewarded with a pleasant view of the ocean. The visitor center also had a small outdoor garden that was available to learn about plant variety in the area. We had hoped to get to spend a day at one of the Channel Islands, but the day of the tours did not align with our visit very well. I am guessing that there are more tours offered in warmer months.

Paramount Ranch - Santa Monica Mountain National Rec.

Continuing towards LA, we decided to drop off and visit Paramount Ranch, which is a part of the Santa Monica Mountain National Recreation Area. In 1927, Paramount Pictures purchased 2,700 acres of a ranch for use as a “movie ranch.” Paramount Pictures sold the ranch when changes to the studio system took place. A man by the name of William Hertz bought the southeastern part of the ranch in 1953 and built a permanent western town using Paramount Pictures old prop storage sheds. After the permanent town was built television companies began producing westerns at the ranch (The Cisco Kid, etc.). William Hertz sold the property in 1955 and the Paramount Racetrack opened a year later. It was considered one of the most challenging tracks in the US, but it closed 18 months later, after three fatal accidents. After the track closed ownership changed several times, which filmmaking continuing.  The National Park Service purchased a portion of the original Paramount property in 1980 and restored it. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was shot at the site from 1992 to 1997. Enough with the history, now more about our visit! The ranch was just okay. There were quite a few of trails there, but if was very obvious that most are used by horses. There was a horse trailer with a sign saying you could rent a horse to take out on the trails. There were a couple of people there taking what appeared to be engagement photos and some girls taking photos of each other. There were a lot of signs stating that you need a permit to take professional photos at the site. It should be notes that most of the track still winds through the grasslands of the park.

For dinner, again with friends, we headed to “The Stand”.  I had the apple slaw turkey burger with onion rings – very tasty! The guys really like the “fire fries”, I am not a huge fan of things hot so I did not try them.