The last couple of weeks

On September 7th, we drove through Solvang on our way to Santa Barbara. Solvang is a town where a lot of Danes settled after they moved to America. The building downtown look very European. It's a very pretty little town and a great place to get breakfast. They still make Danish pastries like they do in Denmark. Santa Barbara was pretty. I think that I would like to live there. It has a beach-front park. It's kind of built up on the side of the mountains. It's a very expensive place. Because of that, we stayed overnight a little south of there in Carpenteria. I thought that I got a good deal on a hotel. Brian thinks that it's where all the illegal migrant workers live. It was a little scary, but funny now that we look back on the experience. We didn't sleep very well because you had to open the windows if you wanted any ventilation and I wasn't about to do that. There were some people that sat outside our door until very early in the morning talking. The large crack around the door enabled us to hear every word that they were saying. On the way back from Santa Barbara we drove through Lompoc which is where they grow a lot of flowers. We were a little late in the season, but we still got to see a couple of flower fields. On the way back from there, we saw field after field of lettuce in various stages of growth.
Last weekend Brian's mom came to visit! We enjoyed showing her around here. On Thursday we went to the Apple Farm (a restaurant and inn that has a lot of flowers and a water wheel/mill). In the evening we went to the SLO Farmer's Market. We always enjoy doing that. On Friday we went to an olive farm where they showed us how they make olive oil. After that we went to a couple of wineries. We went to a wine tasting. After we tasted it, we went out into the vineyard. Brenda tasted a grape and said, "That's really good. Whoever took this grape and ruined it by making that wine should be taken out back and beaten." After that we went to Morro Bay (the closest beach). It was really windy that day. On Saturday we went to the park in Paso Robles. They were having the "Taste of Paso." We had to buy a book of tickets. We then walked around the downtown area and a lot of the restaurants had samples of their food for us to taste. We really enjoyed that and we enjoyed having Brian's mom here for a few days.
We had three days off in a row this week and three days in a row off next week. We decided to just relax. We have been running around so much that we're rather worn out. I have been running around in the evenings when the light outside is a nice rosy gold taking pictures of the vineyards. Our company is having another photo contest. If we win anything, I'll post the picture(s) that win. I'm not sure that I want to enter the contest. I won honorable mention in 2001. They used my picture on the front of that calendar and in that calendar, on the front of one of their magazines, and again in this year's calendar. I figured, though, that I'm not doing anything else with the pictures, so I might as well. This year they're paying $250, which would pay for a lot of photo developing!