John's second project was in Santa Barbara, CA. What a beautiful town! We loved living there for the three months that were supposed to be 3 weeks, as an interim before the Alaska project. Oh well, we survived the perfect weather pretty well.
The downtown is so great! Very few chain stores, no Walmart, Target, Kmart, JC Penney, Sears, etc., mostly individually owned stores with beautiful unique items, a huge Macy's and lots of cafe's, galleries and coffee shops! It was strange at first, but nice that so many small business were flourishing! (Hopefully we will get an Alaska project sometime. I would love to take my camera!) In Santa Barbara, we were close to Scott, only 1 1/2 hours, which was wonderful. We got to see him several times. He gave us several tours of southern California. We even saw Kurtis Shaner and his then fiance/now wife Billie, unexpectedly, at church while traveling with Scott! It was a very happy surprise! (I was Kurtis' Kindergarten teacher!) There were several of Scott's friends from Pepperdine there also.
We spent a fun 4th of July sitting on the beach in S.B. Our hotel was a block from the beach, so we walked down, set up our stuff and enjoyed a fabulous firework display over the ocean!
