Our third day in Santa Barbara we visited another playground (this one was castle themed, so naturally we were trolls runnning some kind of transport business) and the botanical gardens.
The gardens not only have lots of different plants, including a desert zone and a redwood forest, but were also home to several different fairy structures. Remy was on a mission to discover why the fairies had built their houses here. We were not able to locate one, so we were stuck endlessly speculating.
After our garden walk we went to the Douglas
Family Preserve, which is a large piece of land that was saved from development in part by contributions from actor Michael Douglas. A portion of the preserve is a dog park but it butts right up against a shear cliff drop. We did not trust Emma's reckless abandon so she stayed on her leash. the views were wonderful and the heavy vegetation was very different from what we had seen at the gardens.
For dinner we went back to the Funk Zone for a bit of wine tasting and some wood fired pizza. Talking to the server at the tasting room we learned that the Funk Zone had previously been much funkier, but had recently given way to a more modern look. This development, and the influx of money into the area, had unfortunately pushed out a lot of the artists and smaller establishments that had previously given zone it's name. After dinner we cruised down to the beach to watch the sunset and to give Emma some extra exercise. She met an Italian (miniature) greyhound that ran her ragged. We have never seen a dog with that much energy. The greyhound would get one dog to chase her, run until the dog gave up, and then get the next dog she could find to play the game. Emma gave her a good run, but even she was no match for our speedy little friend.
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