Hello from the Ventura Public Library! Today we are staying in the campground at McGrath State Beach for the exorbitant price of $25 per night. The camping prices in California are not cheap. Yesterday we camped at Pismo State Beach for $20. At Pismo, Sarah saw one Monarch butterfly in the nesting area and she also spotted the famous Pismo clam. We were too slow to catch any though! We also got some good pictures of the sunset, but we don’t have any way of posting them to the site yet, so that will have to wait as will the Route page. Sorry guys, we should have a laptop soon. Today we spent most of the day in Santa Barbara which was really beautiful. While there, we even got to go on a bike ride to Julia Child’s favorite taqueria! The line was out the door but the food was great. Tonight we are staying in Ventura and then tomorrow we are going to make a bee-line for Joshua Tree National Park since we heard from some Los Angeles locals that the traffic will be pretty crazy this weekend. We both really like California. Every time we go through a city, Sarah asks, “should we add this to the list of places we want to live?”

Confidential to Emily: We saw a Mountain Lion at Mt. Tam right outside of San Francisco! Sarah wet her pants a little bit for you.