Day 19 - Santa Barbara to Arroyo Grande

I keep running into special events at places that I have planned to go to. First was the POW reunion at the Nixon Library, then the Monstrous Summer event at Disneyland, then today the Italian Street Painting Festival at Mission Santa Barbara. I mean, I know it's Memorial Day and I expected there to be crowds, but goodness gracious, how do I keep ending up at places with special events? In some ways, these events are super cool and I'm amazed that I get to see them and take part, but, on the other hand, there are these massive crowds that I didn't plan for.

So I started out the day leaving the apartment I was staying in in Santa Barbara. I stopped at a local bagel place for breakfast - all the fruit I have is great, but I do need something with a little more substance to start the day. I then made my way over towards Mission Santa Barbara. As I got close, I started to realize that this wasn't such an original idea, which confused me. It wasn't until I parked and walked up to the entrance that I realized what was going on. Luckily, the festival was open to the public without any additional admissions fees, so I got to both tour the Mission and then walk through the festival and checkout some of the artwork.
Here's a picture of this amazing 125 year old tree on the grounds of the mission:

And here's a picture of my favorite piece of street art at the festival. The texture on it was amazing: 

After I left the Mission, I drove about an hour up the coast and started hitting up wineries. I first went to Mosby Winery, which was good. Then up to Avant Tapas and wine, where they had a whole wine of wine that you could try:

Had a great cheese plate there as well. Then onto Melville Winery and Babcock Winery. Melville was one of my favorite wineries that I've visited so far. It had a very Tuscan feel to it and the wines were superb. I ended up buying half a case to be shipped back to Austin. I have a friend that's wine-sitting for me for the summer, so I sent the shipment to him and I'll pick it up from him when I get home. I then drove up to La Purisma Mission State Historic Park, but I just wasn't feeling it, so I continued on and headed up to Santa Maria. I hit one more winery, Costa de Oro. Yes, it sounds like I'm hitting a lot of wineries. Don't worry - I'm being super safe. I'm taking my time, not drinking too much, and since I have the ability to talk with basically anyone, I end up spending plenty of time at each location, which gives me the time to digest and process the wine that I am drinking before I drive again. After I finished at Costa de Oro, I picked up a burger from In 'n Out. I'd never had In 'n Out before. It was pretty good - I thought it tasted like P Terry's, but the fries weren't as good.

I'm super excited about tomorrow - I'm going somewhere I've been looking forward to since I started planning this trip!!