Santa Ynez Valley

Jill's Journal: We spent a truly wonderful week exploring the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley and yet, for all the traipsing around we did, I feel like I got a paltry amount of photos. And the ones I did get didn’t really showcase the loveliness of this place. So, in these days of the web, I spent a few minutes scouring cyberspace and found a few images which captured this area far better than I did.

Lake Cachuma.

The quaint western town of Santa Ynez, the valley’s namesake.

Tiny and charming Ballard.

Los Olivos.

Buellton.

Solvang…

…and another of Solvang, really the signature town of this area.

We also would have loved to try the Danish treat of "aebleskivers" at an authentic Danish bakery. They’re supposed to be light and airy pancake-like balls dusted with powdered sugar and topped with raspberry jam. Apparently people proclaim them a little bit of heaven, but after checking at three different bakeries, we learned it’s common for them to be cooked in peanut oil (something about peanut oil cooking hotter and quicker). Keeping our peanut allergy girl safe immediately trumps any anticipated culinary experience in our book. But if you go, be sure to try them (and please let us know how they are!).

Sicilian (Miniature) Donkeys

Jill's Journal: Our tour of unusual farms in the Santa Ynez Valley has continued with what the girls will remember as a major highlight: a miniature donkey haven, Seein’ Spots Farm in Ballard, California. The owner welcomes visitors and supplies them with brushes, wisely serving the dual purpose of entertaining guests and getting the donkeys groomed.

My, what fabulous ears you have! Technically, miniature donkeys aren’t miniature at all, but just a smaller breed of donkey that originated in the Mediterranean area of Sicily and Sardinia. Interestingly, by all accounts, these donkeys are virtually extinct in those areas now but their population has ballooned in the United States.

Miniature donkeys are extremely friendly and affectionate. And they’re just so darn cute. Madelyn in particular fell head over heals in love with mini donkeys and especially with this one-month-old little guy named Muffin Man.

Seein’ Spots Farm has plenty of other animals too, including a zonkey. With a zebra daddy and a donkey mama, zonkeys are also known as zedonks. As Erika remembered from a previous time we’d seen a zedonk, they’re “donkeys with their party socks on.”

Look at those stripes.

Animals, animals, animals…oh yes, the girls were ready to move right in. They are animal lovers to the core. :)

California’s “Kentucky of the West”

Jill's Journal: We’ve been in the Santa Ynez Valley – which includes the neighboring small towns of Buellton, Solvang, Los Olivos, Ballard, and Santa Ynez itself, all around 15 miles inland and just above Santa Barbara – since Sunday and it took us less than 30 seconds to fall in love with the area. Seriously. The picturesque, rolling hills are dotted with vineyards, but – even better – there’s bucolic horse farms (Thoroughbred, Icelandic, miniature, and more) at every turn. We are smitten. When we spotted literature proclaiming this area the “Kentucky of the west; California’s horse country,” at least that explained why we like it so much. Oh yes, we like it here very, very much.

If we ever decide to call California home again, this is the spot (well, not necessarily the exact place in the photo above, but the general area!). Or it would be if we had a few million to spare. Unfortunately, real estate with a few acres here is outrageously priced (yes, we like it enough to have checked!).

With as taken as we are by the area, it’s no surprise we’re not the first ones to have felt this way. Ronald Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo was not far from here. He used it as his retreat during his presidency and it became known as the “Western White House.” Among the international dignitaries he hosted here were Queen Elizabeth II and Mikhail Gorbachev. And it turns out Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch was/is here too. There goes the neighborhood!

We’ve spent some time in the darling little Danish town of Solvang, which just celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year. Rob and I have both been here before, both separately and together, and it’s touristy but just such a delight. This meticulous, picturesque, pedestrian-friendly little village has flower-lined streets and windmills and is the closest thing to Denmark here in America.

I want to shrink our girls and put them in these traditional Danish clothes! How adorable would that be?

Ornamental storks appear on rooftops all over the town. The Danes consider them good luck (as do the Dutch…I wonder how many European cultures do?).

There’s a statue of Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish writer of just about every good fairy tale known to children…

…and a small museum dedicated to him and his 160+ fairy tales known the world over…

…which includes things like authentic correspondence from the man himself, who lived from 1805 to 1875.

In next-door Buellton, one can’t pass up a visit to Pea Soup Andersen’s, a stopover for travelers since 1924.

The rest of the food is nothing to write home about, but the signature split pea soup is delicious. Andersen’s serves over two million bowls of it annually.