January 18 - January 31 Soledad Canyon TTN (Acton, CA)

N34° 26.763'

W118° 12.178'

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January 31 - Have come to the end of 2 weeks that I'll never have back again.  All in all, fairly unsatisfactory time.  Partial dissatisfaction had to do with some trailer malfunction errors that are still unresolved.  The preserve seems to be in a state of decline since the last time we were here 3 years ago.  The high point of the past several weeks was our visit today to the Exotic Feline Breeding and Conservation Center outside Lancaster..  A very clean facility dedicated to the breeding and conservation of endangered felines.  I'll put a few pictures in the Current Photos section.  Off tomorrow to Wilderness Lakes (near Hemet, CA)  for a week.

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January 18 - Beautiful day to relocate from Santa Barbara County to LA County.  The orange trees and lemon trees are full with fruit; the sun is shining; and we have un-assisted cell phone service for the first time in a month.  I am writing this as a sort of place-holder and will add to the entry once we have some trips and/or adventures.

January 4 - January 17 Rancho Oso TTN (Santa Barbara, CA)

N34°32.187'W119°45.975

January 17, 2009 -  This is the last day of our 2 weeks at Rancho Oso.  It's been the best overall stay this season.  We enjoyed having guests, sightseeing in Santa Barbara and Solvang.  Only thing to mar the stay was a transmission problem that had the truck in the shop for a long weekend.  But a rental car was the solution to transportation and we enjoyed a couple of trips to the Chumash Casino.  This last week has been our get-serious and get-in-shape kick-off and we've been hiking the horse trails for about 2 miles every day.  Finally, we enjoyed a demonstrtion of stock dogs by a top trainer and judge here at Rancho Oso.  The stock dog demo was followed by a training session for bucking bulls.  The bulls are young and the cowboys put weighted teddy bears on them that are released by remote control.  The explanation of how stock dogs are trained and how bucking bulls are trained was really detailed and informative.  Tomorrow we move to Acton, CA to Soledad Canyon Thousand Trails.  But I'm going to miss Santa Barbara!

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January 8, 2009:  We have had enjoyable days since arriving Sunday at Rancho Oso in the Santa Ynez mountains in Santa Barbara County, CA.  We were joined by Carole & Jim on Monday for a 3-day visit.  Besides lots of good conversation (that means Carole & I talked our heads off), we made a trip to Santa Barbara and several hikes around the preserve were undertaken.