Saturday June 19, 2010 - Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara is a pleasant 40-minute drive or so to the north of Camarillo. The 101 winds quickly from Camarillo into Oxnard and almost indistinguisably into Ventura. Then there's suddenly very little but the ocean on the left and the brown hills on the right. There are several small beach communities that come and go quickly before arriving in Santa Barbara proper. Carpinteria. Summerland. Montecito.

Saturday was meeting day. First the elders. Then lunch with the praise team. Finally a mid-afternoon meeting with the Call committee. I was pretty drained by the end of it all. The drive back down the coast was beautiful. Early evening and the sun was beginning the slow descent into the Pacific. Hordes of people were on the beaches and dotting the surf, their cars and RVs lining the narrow parking strip next to the freeway. License plates from around the country shared the freeway.

In our time in California we adopted the pattern of not really doing much or going anywhere during the summer. Everyone in the world wants to be in Southern California in the summer, it seems. And since the weather is pretty steady all year, there are other times when we can enjoy the local pleasures without having to compete with tourists. I'm not sure that I had driven this stretch of the coast during June before. So beautiful. There are certainly worse places in the world one could want to live, that's for sure. I wonder how big a factor that should be in the decisions that lie ahead in the next few weeks?