Day 5: Santa Barbara, culinary highs and football lows

10:00 am: Breakfast time brought us to Tupelo Junction Cafe up the street from our hotel. I found it online and was sold on its Southern theme. We shared the "Buttermilk Biscuit with Sausage Gravy" and the "Mom's Pumpkin Oatmeal Waffle with Caramelized Bananas, Candied Pecans & Real Maple Syrup." They restaurant was funky and artsy with mason jar glasses and the food was excellent. The biscuits were delicious though Adam didn't enjoy the spicy sausage gravy as much as I did and the pumpkin waffle was a nice complement to the biscuits and gravy. We waddled out of Tupelo Junction and headed out to the Santa Barbara Mission.

Noon: Mass was in session when we arrived so we missed out on seeing the sanctuary, but we did pay to take the mission's self guided tour where we dutifully read typewritten placards chronically mission life that were sometimes inconsistent. We were also confused by the vacation policy for the Native American population. One placard said, every five weeks 20% of the population received 1 week of vacation which amounts to about 2 weeks a year. Later on, another placard said, one week of vacation every five weeks which works out to be 10 weeks of vacation which would be pretty sweet.

1:30 pm: We drove from the mission straight to La Super Rica, Julia Child's favorite taco stand. I wasn't sure if we'd make it to La Super Rica, but Cad Cowboy [husband of Laurel] had e-mailed me a few days before our trip raving about the place so we had to go. Sure enough, there was a line out the door. I struck up a conversation with the woman in front of me in line. She looked like she might be an expert. She was calming standing in line with a fistful of ones while the rest of the line was craning our necks to view the menu. She was also wearing a t-shirt that said Mexico to boot. Turns out, she lived two blocks away and La Super Rica was her favorite taco place. She recommended the Super Rica Special tacos, the tamales, quesadillas and the posole. We skipped the posole since it was hot and the quesadilla, but took most of her recommendations and tried the chorizo tacos. When we got to the window to order, I was spellbound by the sight of the kitchen, six people cooking in a tiny space. One woman's sole job was to make tortillas. She took little balls of dough, flattened them in a tortilla press and grilled them. The food was really good and I think it was the fresh tortillas that made contributed the most. The Super Rica special was steak and peppers with melted cheese. Unfortunately, the peppers were too hot for me which dampened my enthusiasm. The Chorizo tacos were my favorite and the tasty tamale topped with the cream sauce was unusual. Next time, I'm going for the plain tacos and skipping anything with peppers.

Afternoon: The Patriots were playing the Colts so we found a dive bar where I deposited Adam for the first hour of the game while I went shopping. I joined Adam after the first quarter for a super exciting and ultimately super sad game as the Patriots lost in the end.

8:00 pm: We scooted out of the bar real fast after the game to avoid any drunken Colts fans and ran up the street to Fat Burger for dinner. We each ordered a cheeseburger and shared a strawberry milkshake and fries. The food was pretty good and the milkshake had real ice cream. With our bellies full, we headed out of Santa Barbara toward LA where we stayed with plasticmom.

Postscript: Santa Barbara wins the Zakun Culinary Best in Show award for the most delicious city. Big Sur wins Most Pretty Award and is worth the windy drive. We lucked out with gorgeous weather and perfect driving conditions and our itinerary worked out really well. All in all, we really enjoyed our first road trip together and didn't want to kill each other so I'd say a definite success.