South to Santa Barbara

I was trying to get on the road before noon because I'm 76 and I need to be careful of what biorhythm

my body is in timewise during the day. I knew if I drove after about 2 pm that I would have to drink coffee to stay awake from 5 pm to 7:30 Pm or whatever time we arrived in Santa Barbara. Finally, our housekeeper misunderstood my wife and didn't show up at 12.30pm like my wife wanted but we got away by 2:30 pm. So, I knew I would need to buy at least one Ice coffee so I got a vanilla Starbucks in King City when we stopped there for gas anyway and we also went to starbucks for some other food too.

We are tandeming down in two cars because my son-in-law is coming from Europe so will need a car in San Diego and wherever else he decides to drive to. 

However, I figured out a way (or likely I think my wife thought of this idea) of having me drive our Ascent which is only a couple of years old and so have this automatic Driving feature where if there isn't much traffic you can let the car drive itself. Many people are afraid of this kind of technology but for me I find it very restful more than anything else to let the car drive itself if the conditions are right.

And even if I  turn off the automatic driving feature and ONLY use the automatic cruise control with automatic braking this is still pretty restful because I almost never have to brake the car either because it will slow down automatically if a car in front of you is driving slower than you are.

It was a little dusty especially between Salinas and Paso Robles though because it was very windy and it was stirring up the dust a lot. Somewhere near Los Olivos I think we could see something that looked like a thunderhead in the distance but likely was smoke from the fire there near Neverland Ranch that Michael Jackson owned when he was alive.

However, the vineyards and trees all the way south were very green and likely the greenest I have seen them in years likely because the rain has been great the last two years now. So, the oaks and other trees all the way south are very green and doing quite well too. However, there were several burnt areas along the side of the road 101 where the grasses had burned along the highway and one where there was still smoke coming up in some places which likely wasn't good either somewhere near Greenfield heading south. 

We decided not to stop in Buellton because we both were getting sort of tired and wanted to push through to Santa Barbara so we cut off likely 45 minutes to an hour by not stopping there for food or gas at that point. We arrived just before sunset and the roses were still in blowm at our house there and the jacaranda bushess were in bloom so it was very beautiful there and so we sat outside and watched the sunset together and it was a nice temperature so this was really nice to be here again in Santa Barbara.