We were subjected to our worst raccoon attack yet last night. The sound of the waves was so loud that we didn’t hear them until they pushed our dishes off the picnic table. Adam ventured out and found they had eaten everything in our cooler, except the oranges and apples. This included two half full bags of cookies, two little bags of carrots, a granola bar and several packages of sugar. We quickly cleaned up the mess, treed the food and returned to bed.
In the morning, I washed all the dishes and the cooler and the oranges and packed them all back up. We headed back out to US 101 via a bike path to El Capitain State Park. In typical California State Park fashion, the bike path was closed partway down with no signage about this at the start of the path. We followed a detour clearly taken by other cyclists and headed back to the highway.
From here, it was good riding to Santa Barabara. The cross-town bike route was well marked and we saw many cyclists out for their Saturday morning rides. Once in Santa Barabara, we stopped at the Mission and got to tour for free as it was the “225th anniversary celebration”. It was neat to see inside. The missionaries built these building a days walk apart all the way up and down the southern coast of California.
Next we stopped at the courthouse, which was gorgeous, with mosaic tiles and nice Spanish architecture. They had a clocktower that we took the elevator up to that showed a view of the entire city. We also stopped at the Presidencio (or fort) of Santa Barbara and had a quick look from the outside.
Finally, we made a stop at Starbucks downtown for some coffee and internet. Several people stopped to ask us about our trip. One woman was incredulous that we would be flying back to Canada in the winter, asking if we knew how cold it was up there.
We headed out of town along the beachfront bike path. The book stated it was normally too crowded to cycle on but we had plenty of room, basically just us and the transients hanging out at the beach in December!
We cycled into Carpenteria following frontage roads and bike paths the entire way. With a quick stop for fuel and food, we made camp just before dark.
Trip Around The World 
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