Santa Barbara, CA - Into Town - Afternoon

After we had explored the Maritime Museum (for about 4 hours) we walked up to the 4th story of the building and had one of the best views of Santa Barbara across the marina from the deck on top.

When we got down we noticed lots of people out on one of the piers in the marina and strolled over to get in on the action. Here we saw some of the actual working part of Santa Barbara when several commercial fishermen offloaded their catch for the day into ice for transportation to your grocery store. Yes, Santa Barbara has lots of pleasure craft but it also has a large fishing fleet which also sails from the same marina. Interestingly, the commercial fishermen get to moor their ships the closest to the marina itself while the pleasure yachts moor further out.

After this we decided, at 3:00 to have a bite to eat. It had been a long time since breakfast and we were both hungry. Gary loves clam chowder and hasn’t had a good bowl of this since we left Massachusetts where we used to live. The chowder he had here was thick, creamy, had lots of potatoes and onions and had lots of clams. Lots of clams. Fancy that. Best chowder he’s ever had - he thinks. My club sandwich was also very good.

Time for our walk and no place better to do it than along the beach. We walked to Sterns Wharf a short ways down the beach and sauntered along it, towards the end. Sterns Wharf was completed in 1872 and was the longest deep-water pier between LA and SF. It was built by John P. Sterns to better serve the passenger and shipping needs of the area. Prior to this, the ocean was so shallow here that passengers and cargo had to be off-loaded and then rowed ashore through breakers and kelp.

In the 1940’s the shipping from the wharf was replaced and a restaurant was built on the end of it signaling the end of its use as a shipping pier and the the beginning of its use for tourism. Unfortunately, the wharf has sustained many disasters, from the earthquake in 1925 to a fire in 1973 which closed it for 6 years and another fire in 1998 which destroyed 150’ of the wharf including the Moby Dick Restaurant.

Interestingly, the wharf was made of wood soaked in creosote. While the creosote might help to preserve the wood, it is also highly flammable. The firemen drove their trucks right out onto the fire, sawed part of the wharf off to make a fire line and stopped the fire from spreading back down towards the shore. Thus they saved many shops and other businesses and only lost the Moby Dick and two other businesses.

We noticed that, now, smoking on the wharf is allowed only in several designated areas.

and that there are special fire hydrants which hook up to the fire trucks and can spray water under the wharf to help put out any future fires.

We saw where the wave had broken over the wharf and smashed through a window of the Moby Dick restaurant. They had covered it already with plywood but it must have been a shock to the diners.

Oh, look, if we get back to the car before 4:31, we won’t have to pay for another hour. So we hustled back to the car, counting down the minutes, as it became obvious that we would not make it. At $2.00 per hour, it would cost a bit. But the ticket taker was kind and did not charge us. Home again jiggity jog

Oops, what about those errands? Ah, well, it was a long day and we can get those done another time.

On another related note. While I was playing online I looked up the Stern’s Wharf Fire and found some terribly scary images of another fire in Santa Barbara. It is a picture from Stern’s Wharf looking towards what was called the Tea fire which began in a Tea House in the hills in November 2008. I have never lived in a fire prone area so don’t know the horror of seeing this close to your home. I can only imagine what it must be like to look out your back door and see this in the hills above your home, knowing how close it is and how, with a slight shift in the winds, your home might be next.

On Wednesday, Gary and I took a road trip which actually took us through the area that burned in 2008. 220 houses were destroyed in the fire and the homes in this area all look new. The owners have also made a distinct effort to plant on the burned hillsides: firstly because it is much more attractive but also because it helps to hold the slope in case of rain. Here is a picture we took in that area. You can still see some brown burned out sections but also soem sections with hundreds of new plantings trying to hold the slope.

I have a friend who lives in Flagstaff in Arizona on a wooded lot with lots of pine trees. She and her husband are continually taking precautions to try to prevent a fire in their yard or from spreading to their home from another yard. They gather up the pinecones, they trim their bushes, rake the pine needles and they cut down ‘volunteer’ bushes growing in their yard. It is a beautiful wooded lot but they are continually working to keep it ‘fire resistant.’