That's Sooooo Cal

So STL/KC was three weekends ago. Two weekends ago, I decided to go to Ventura on a whim. Why? Why not. My friend was going and I wanted to see was up down there. It's north of LA, so Ventura feels like my Mason-Dixon line on this side of the country.

We left on a Saturday evening and drove until about 12:30. We attempted to find a campsite. Next time, we'll plan ahead, but this was a last minute trip. I have only slept in my car once before and I don't really have a desire to do it again. It was not fabulous. We tried to get into one campground which seemed to have people living there permanently. They have their RVs and they must just dump them out as soon as they arrive at a campground. A few looked like they had a fully stocked kitchen outside of their RV. I am, now, even more put off by RVs.

The next morning, we made the short drive to Santa Barbara and ate breakfast at the Cajun Kitchen. If I'd known this was a chain, I might not have gone there, but the kid (really, a young guy) at Starbucks could not contain himself when I asked him where we should eat. He had three places and this was his favorite. Actually, it was really good. The biscuits were to die for.

It was less than an hour to Ventura! Woo hoo! We saw more RVs and tried to secure camping for the night. No dice. Meanwhile, I'm on about five hours of sleep. It was like taking a red eye.

As I started to enter delirium, I suggested we stop driving and just walk downtown. Main St. Ventura might be one of the cuter places I've been. Most everything on the street is local and there are lots of cute surf shops, restaurants, boutiques, and....thrift stores! There were at least three thrift stores on the main drag and more as we drove around that day. How does this town support so many thrift stores?

Well...maybe they're not doing the best job supporting as this 1979 product made by Ronco was still there.

This was the mural to honor the Chinese immigrants who lived in Ventura. Sorry...San Buenaventura. That means Saint Good Luck. Wow. What a sweet name. EB is stylin' here!

Why did we really go? A pilgrimage to Patagonia headquarters. Why else? And let me tell you. It was nothing short of amazing.

Here's the shed that Yvon Chouinard rented way back in the 70s (1973) to make his climbing gear. The climbing gear company eventually became Black Diamond.

The first retail store used to be a meat packing and sausage plant. Today, I met the granddaughter of the man who owned that plant and who rented the tin shed to YC. This is outside, looking in on the kids area. The glass windows are where the loading docks used to be and inside, you might be able to make out the rusty racks that meat used to hang on. There are even drains in the basement. Ugh!

The retail store there, known as Great Pacific Iron Works, was really beautiful and it was our first encounter with the amazingly nice people of Patagonia. They gave us a suggestion for lunch and we were off.

In no time, we saw this guy...

Can you see the dog with the sunglasses? Yeah, I think you should click on this picture to look at a larger size. I wish we had counted how many times we saw this car throughout the day, but it had to be bordering on a dozen. And this was from about 11am - 5pm. What's his story?

Our story was that we were tired. I was grumpy and the food didn't actually help. Only sleep would help. So, we started on our mission to find a place to lie horizontally for the evening. It was probably 2pm at the start and it took hours! We first tried to go to the library. The one we found was closed and then the other one didn't exist. We had an address, but there was no building there...not even room for one. We got some DQ to help our brains. I was really getting cranky at this point. I called the YMCAs, only to find out they didn't do sleepovers. I finally figured out how to get to Kinko's so we could use their Internet. Every place we called was full or no one answered. Vagabond Inn it was ($60 would be fine). Then, EB's friend in Ventura called. Oh, just head up to Camp Comfort in Ojai. I put it in the GPS. It was only 11 miles away. I thought I was going to die, but we had to try. We got to Camp Comfort and as we were scoping it out, the "Park Host" came around in his little, tiny vehicle. He told us that we could stay there with the RVs, but we may want to check out an all-tent park that's just 6 miles further up the road for half as much ($20). Yes! We do! We get on our way (about 6pm now), exhaulting when we found a great grocery store that gave us a cheap-ish dinner and even more celebratory when we got to Dennison Park. All campsites were available and we couldn't be happier.

We set up the tent and ate some dinner. So thankful.

Here's a view of Ojai from the park. Did I mention it was about a million degrees up there. Ventura was a nice high-70s or low 80s. Ojai had to be in the 90s. But, it was going to be the best sleep I'd had in 24 hours, so I was content.

The next day, we got up whenver and made our way back to the ocean. It was a gorgeous day. We started by hitting up the beach.

Does it get better? Blue sky. Blue ocean. And trains.

Then we went to Patagonia HQ...Corporate. This place was so incredible. I would love to tell you every little detail, but I'll say that everyone there was just awesome. If I liked Ventura/SoCal more, I might just consider working there one day. And maybe I will work there one day. We...had a great chat with the receptionist Chris, were toured around by Maggy (who I had met in Palo Alto only days before) who works in R&D, we saw the sewing rooms and the design rooms and the environmental department, and the chef, etc. Did I mention how nice everyone was? I liked asking people how they ended up at the company. I got some pretty diverse answers. All of them made me think that it's not totally unlikely that I could work there one day if I wanted to. Probably the greatest thing about Corporate for me are the parent benefits. There's on-site child care and flexible hours for parents in order to make the place as family-friendly as possible. I wish I had the memory to describe it, but it wasn't just your normal day care. This is one of the first on-site child care set-ups in the country.

In front of HQ, they have two cruisers. You are just allowed to take them and cruise around town if you want. So we took them to the beach.

Check out what's in the background on the right in this picture.

And they were everywhere! A man was building them...by balancing rocks on top of each other. I'm not sure if the pictures convey just how incredible this was. It's not like the rocks were shipped in and flat on one side. He was just collecting rocks and balancing them by finding the center of mass.

The colony!

The artist. Wow. What a great way to finish off the trip.

From there, EB got in the water for some surf time. I read my book. And we both enjoyed some mellow time in one of the most chill places I've been. Cheers to a fun trip!