11/13/07 (Tuesday): Greetings from sunny Southern California! We're having a blast. This is a beautiful part of our country, and very different from any place we've ever lived before. We're settling in very nicely and enjoying the company of some great people. Here's our casa, snuggled under a couple of olive trees with a hummingbird feeder that stays constantly busy.

Wiley has picked a couple gallons of ripe olives and is processing them in a brine solution.






It's a fun place to take walks. We had heard that the famous California happy cows (from the commercial) lived on adjacent ranchland. We saw them one evening. They look very contented, but the green pastures in the commercial were nowhere to be seen!
The deer who wander the campground are also happy and laid back! They like to eat the olives.









This is some of the damage from the recent fires. They're the remains of outbuildings of the adjacent ranch. If it hadn't been for the lake, this whole area would be devastated.

On Sunday we went into Ventura (about 30 miles from here). We were having a light rain (very much needed), so we visited the old Mission San Buenaventura. It dates back to 1749, although it's been added to and reconstructed a number of times. This picture is from their website. We couldn't get to the front of the mission because of construction in the area.
We wandered the courtyard and beautiful gardens behind the mission and went in a small museum where there were vestments and historic items. It was very interesting.








Afterwards, it started clearing up, so we went to the Ventura Pier. It's very historic. The Chumash Indians launched their plank canoes, called “tomols” from this beach. They conducted a busy daily trade of fish, shell bead “money”, acorns and other goods with other villages along the coast and on the Channel Islands from this area.

In the 1860s, the primary form of transportation in the Ventura area was ships. But without a wharf the vessels had to anchor offshore, which made loading and unloading difficult. Then in 1871, a man who transported people and goods from the ships to the shore on barges proposed building a wharf. It was completed a few years later, and there's been a pier here ever since.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day, so we decided to take a drive through the Los Padres National Forest to the Bitter Creek Condor Sanctuary. We didn't see any condors, but it was a gorgeous drive. I have a couple of videos I was going to post, but my dial up connection is too slow, so I'll just put a couple of still pictures here. If you'd like to learn more about condors and the sanctuary, click on this link: Bitter Creek Condor Sanctuary.



Today we worked around camp, did a little grocery shopping and generally vegged out a little. Tomorrow is a workday. Wish you could all be here to share our adventure in person. We're having so much fun!

By the way, I put a counter on the blog so I'll have some idea how many people are viewing it. If I succeeded, you should be able to see it on the upper right side of the blog.