Here Comes the Sun

May and June travel recap + life as Santa Barbara residents

Hi there! We hope you all are having a great start to the summer and invite you to rewind back to spring with us as we recap the past two months (May and June).

May Recap

We last met here as two new “residents” to the city of Santa Barbara. Our move went smooth (yes everything fit in our car again… which I love to remind Tyler of, every time he tells me I am purchasing “unnecessary things”). We are living in a cute multi-level condo about a 10-minute walk from downtown Santa Barbara. The surrounding neighborhoods are so cute and bustling! Walking to coffee, new restaurants and finding live music in the area have been some of our favorite weekend activities. Our Lucy is back to being a city girl and enjoys all of the new things to smell and is always hoping to find a crumb of something good on the streets. We also happen to have an E-bike docking station right outside of our apartment which makes it super convenient for us to hop on and ride to the beach!

Our May trip was a quick weekend getaway to Joshua Tree National Park (slowly but surely hoping to hit every National Park in the U.S.) and Palm Springs. While it is always exciting to adventure to new places, we definitely picked the wrong time of year to venture out to the desert. It was extremely hot in both places which limited what all we could do; but we had a good time together nonetheless! If we ever make it back to Palm Springs we will 100% be going during the winter.

June Recap

We welcomed the beginning of June by taking a 3 day road trip up the coast to Napa and Sonoma Valley, Sausalito and made a much anticipated return to San Francisco. Napa and Sonoma had been on our list of places we must visit while in California. While we are no where near sommelier status nor “fancy” people, we had seen pictures of the perfectly manicured vineyards and extravagant hills lined with wineries and had to check it off our California bucket list! Our long weekend started Friday morning at Chateau St. Jean in Sonoma Valley. This was a stunning French-inspired winery and we spent the morning enjoying the quietness of the grounds. Next, we drove through the winding hills to Napa Valley and made our first stop at Castello di Amarosa. Here we explored the beautiful castle and learned about the winery’s history through a guided walking tour. At the end of the tour we enjoyed a wine and chocolate tasting. Our final stop in Napa was the famous Domaine Carneros, known for their sparkling wines (which we learned is actually champagne, however, they are unable to use the term “champagne” as it is not produced in Champagne, France). We loved spending time in both Sonoma and Napa, but highly recommend Napa if you were to pick one area of wine country to visit. The beauty and calmness of the wineries makes for a relaxing and visually pleasing escape!

Sausalito is a small town in the Bay area just north of San Francisco. If you have ever seen the limited series or read the book “Things I never Told You” Sausalito is the main setting. Here we spent the morning eating brunch and walking along the coast of the Bay. It was a cloudy morning, but you could still see the silhouette of San Francisco’s downtown skyline. Sausalito was such a cute area to explore and we hope to go back again. While in the Bay area, we also made sure to visit Muir Woods National Monument; which is famous for the giant Redwoods. We loved the break from all of the city noises and tourists to escape into quiet, lush and calming nature. The Redwoods were amazing - we had never seen trees so big and it was crazy to think about how long they have been there.

Since we had already been to San Francisco once before with Lucy, we wanted to do activities that we were unable to do last time with a dog. We spent most of our day traveling through the city by the cable cars. It was giving *Princess Diaries* - we loved riding the cable cars up and down the steep city hills and sightseeing along the way. We booked a self-guided tour through Alcatraz Island that afternoon and learned about the history of the prison through narrators who were once prisoners and guards there. This was an incredibly well done and informative tour and one of the highlights of the trip! That evening we ate the most delicious authentic Chinese dinner in China Town. We may still be thinking about that meal...

Our trip back to the Bay area was just wonderful. We were able to have a dash of all of our favorite things - relaxation, time in nature, sightseeing, good food and exploring together.

Much to our surprise, May and June in southern California have deservingly earned the nicknames of “May gray” and “June gloom.” During each month we had only a handful of truly sunny days *cue the tiny violins.* We definitely did not expect so much gloom - I mean, hello, we are supposed to be in sunny California! Taking a trip up to the Bay area during this time of year was so good for our souls - it is amazing the mood boost that a little vitamin D can bring. We are learning to be content in the gray, as it makes the clear-skied blue days that much more beautiful. We are thankful and hopeful for many sunny days ahead :)

love always,

The Wandering Wrights