The Santa Ynez Valley in a mountain setting

I recently spent a weekend with a friend in the Santa Ynez Valley and had a great time. We toured around, went wine tasting, had dinner at the Hitching Post, drinks at Root 246, and met nice people. I love the place and recommend it to anybody who lives in Southern California.

Here's a vid of that trip should you be interested:



I remember reading a listing about a property for sale in Walker Basin describing it as "the Santa Ynez Valley in a mountain setting" and "Champagne land at beer prices." Sure, the areas have some similarities such as landscape, oak trees, weather (somewhat-they rarely get snow) but I don't think you can compare the two. For one, most of the Santa Ynez Valley is at 200 ft above sea level; the basin is above 3000. The valley is agricultural with much viniculture, the basin is not. The valley gets a lot of water runoff from the Sierras, it just roars by us on its way down. They have hospitals, wineries, restaurants and churches, we have the Trading Post and TOGS. We do have a church in Twin Oaks though.

Walker Basin is also described in the listing as the Old West. That I would agree with. It's the living Old West whereas the Santa Ynez Valley is by now only an image of that time. We still have unpaved road, too much rain or snow makes access difficult, electricity goes out once in a while, some of us are off the grid, we have wells for our water, we keep wood for the stove in winter, we walk over to our neighbors and friends, we help each other. It's the California Steinbeck describes so often in his books.

Oh, I forgot another similarity, we have ostriches in Walker Basin too...



We don't have large ostrich farms but a neighbor in the basin has about ten... The picture above was taken near Buellton by the way.

Walker Basin/Twin Oaks/Piute Meadows/Thompson Canyon is not for everybody. The place is stuck in time. Never mind that the Joe Walker Mine was the highest producing gold mine in California in 1870. One would think, looking at Coloma and Northern Cal's gold country off the 49, that it would have been enough to start communities. In 1870 there also was a tremendous earthquake that flooded the mine and that was that. The Pony Express used to go through the basin. Thing of the past. Havilah had the Kern County courthouse, thing of the past. The basin was called Yitpe by Native Americans, thing of the past.

I don't really want to live in the past, sounds way too rough for me, but I really like getting a sense of what it was like for pioneers and living it to some degree. So far I've noticed that I have a greater appreciation and respect for Nature. I won't elaborate about the rest because it is something personal each of us needs to experience to understand but I can at least say that I feel that it has made my soul richer. For one, it has taught me not to take anything for granted. Heck, a warm shower really is a wonderful thing.

'Til next time.