hitting the road again

like pretty much all 4th graders in this state, the bean has a report to do on one of the many (21, to be exact) missions in california.  she was assigned the la purisma concepcion mission up in lompoc, and since we had a free weekend we decided to road trip it up there for a quickie overnight for her to do some research.

while she was at school on friday, the hub and i had some time to head out for a breakfast date.  not wanting to go to the usual spots, we decided to try something different - grizzby's donuts in claremont.

they're known for their breakfast biscuit sandwiches, which is how i sold it to the hub.  he's not a huge donut fan, so i knew those weren't the key to getting him in the door.  the shop is pretty small, but there were some delicious smells coming from the kitchen area and the donuts looked pretty darn good.

the menu offered a good amount of savory items, too:

this was the cadence sandwich - bacon, canadian bacon, a fried egg, cheese and a potato cake (aka a hash brown) served in a fresh, fluffy biscuit with an herb mayo.  so big.  so good.

the hub decided we needed to try one of each donut.  heh.  so much for not being much of a fan, huh?

and then as soon as the bean was out of school we hopped in the car and hit the road.

the weather got cooler and cooler as we headed up north, which was a nice change from the 80-degree temperatures we had at home.

and right around 7pm, we finally pulled into solvang, our home for the night.

the hub had booked us a room at the landsby, which looked really cute online.

it didn't disappoint.  we climbed up these to get to our room:

which was super cute and comfy.  and the toiletries were from l'occitane!  i'm a sucker for a good set of hotel toiletries.

there was a nice little balcony with a view of the courtyard below.

we really loved "tina the llama."  i kind of want her for our house.

as we went out for a quick walk around town, we saw that there were comfy places to sit in front of a fire in the courtyard.

not finding anywhere else during our walk, we ended up at the hotel's restaurant.  after a short wait in the bar area, we were seated in the middle of the restaurant with the hub and me on a comfy couch and the bean in a fluffy chair across from us.

all of my pictures of the food turned out dark and blurry, but that's okay.  you probably don't really care anyway.  but everything was delicious and we were stuffed silly by the end of the meal.

i'd say it was a great start to our little road trip.