Santa Monica

We enjoyed a delightful morning exploring Santa Monica and Venice Beach, and then endured a somewhat hellish afternoon of travel snafus on our way to Santa Barbara. But first, the good! We walked from our hotel across to the Santa Monica beach and pier, and then explored nearby Tongva Park, admiring the cacti and enormous fig trees. Next, we went to Venice Beach, for which we have decided the tag line should be "keep Venice Beach seedy!" - we admired the waves crashing onto rocks and the surfers, and strolled to the Venice canals, which were more scenic than we expected.

After lunch, when we were intending to leave LA and head north to Santa Barbara (actually, Mussel Shoals), was when the fun began. We had reserved a minivan at Hertz for us plus mom and dad, but when we went to pick it up, Hertz had no minivans available, and in fact, no cars at all. We finally did get one car from them, but then had to go to a different car rental agency to get another car, which was the last one they had in stock. By then it was 4 pm, and when we hit the road, the traffic looked awful all the way to Santa Barbara. Hwy I-5 was closed north of LA because of snow in the mountains, diverting everyone to Hwy 101 along the coast. Carl and family also got diverted because of the interstate closure and then trapped in hellish traffic. It took them 12 hours to make a 6-hour journey. We joked that we somehow managed to break the space/time continuum, because the closer we got -- the longer we drove -- to our AirBnB, the longer Google Maps told us it would take to get there.  But we made it, and we were all safe and sound, and we all slept, and we woke up in the morning to sunshine and the rooftop deck with ocean views of our house.