Coast Starlight - Santa Barbara area

Saturday October 3, 2009

With happy hearts we carried on to Santa Barbara.

Between LA and Santa Barbara, the train passes through Van Nuys, the San Fernando Valley, Simi Valley and Oxnard. Oxnard is an important agricultural area known for sugar beets, lima beans, lemons, oranges, walnuts, celery and especially strawberries. Its beach and sand dunes have been used in movies to represent Middle Eastern deserts.

This picture reminds me of an old western movie scene.

Santa Barbara is a place I've wanted to visit for a long time so I was happy to go through it even if we only saw the train station. We arrived here probably around noon.

I have no idea where these pictures were taken other than they were in the area. We saw more surfers.

Since there was no dome car on this train, the photos often have window reflections.

Also, we still had the wrong setting on the camcorder, giving the chopped-off-top-and-bottom shape we see in this photo.

I liked this countryside and would love to go horseback riding there.