The drive yesterday was simply amazing. Jeff and I have seen LA before and we've both been to San Jose, but the drive between the two has some of most beautiful natural views I've ever seen. We flew in to Los Angeles on Saturday and spent the afternoon there. After picking up dessert at Real Food Daily we drove up to Ventura where there was a room at La Quinta waiting for us. After checking in we took the half-hour trip to Santa Barbara for dinner at Spiritland Bistro and drinks in a local bar. The part Jeff and I have been planning out over the past couple months however, was yesterday's journey. I've done parts of Highway 1 before - Candace and I travelled between Malibu and Laguna Beach last year on our E3 trip (you can see some of the photos from that trip at OnBeaches.com). This year Jeff and I packed the whole 350-odd miles into one day. In the morning we got on the road pretty early, maybe a little after 8:00. Jeff drove first and I took a few pictures out the window. I know logically that there's no real reason to pick up a camera in a car driving at 70 miles per hour, but there's something that gets me every time I'm on a trip. There's this instinct to capture and hold on to great memories of great places. There's no real shareable value in photos shot out the window of a moving vehicle. Generally they're only of interest to the people who were there since the quality is only good enough to act as a queue to the sense of adventure that the scenery stirred up in the first place. When we got into Santa Barbara in the morning we went up State Street (the main drag). There's a wharf that juts a long way out into the water. We took a walk out to the end and soaked in the ocean smells and clear views out to the horizon. The wharf also affords a look back over the city laid out in front of the mountains. I'm still learning to use my new camera - a Digital Rebel XT, but I think I shot a few nice ones. We'd hoped originally to spend some time on Leadbetter beach, but when we got there it was way too windy. I took a couple pics of the highway winding up and away from the city and a couple of the sand and surf, and that was enough. I guess next time I'll pack a little warmer when the weather reports say 50 degrees and overcast. We left the city via CA-154 so we could drive by Lake Cachuma. The amazing thing here is that we only found this little scenic inland mountain lake thanks to panning around on Google Maps. Thanks Google. The views along the whole drive were stunning - I've only covered about the first couple hours of it. I can't believe how many photos I took already - my laptop isn't that great for retouching (because of the colour reproduction), but it's going to be a lot of fun digging through them and writing up the story that goes along with them. If you're interested, watch for pictures to pop up in my Flickr stream or at OnBeaches.com. We're going to dinner at House of Siam tonight with a few other geeks, so this is where we switch in to full conference mode. The next few days Jeff and I will be covering as much of GDC as we can, pushing our ideas and taking in others. While nobody can see all there is to see at the conference, we'll pass along everything we get the time to type up.