We decided to spend our 4-day weekend for Memorial Day at the Vandenberg AFB Fam Camp and explore the Santa Barbara Wine Country. There are so many wineries that it was hard to choose which ones to visit! Because of the AF base in the area, many of the wineries offer a free tasting flight for military, so we definitely took advantage of that. We shared a flight at most of the wineries we visited, but we got a flight for each of us at a couple of the wineries. Santa Barbara County Wines are mostly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Most of the wineries have preset flights, but some of them allowed you to pick which ones you wanted in your flight.
The Fam Camp at Vandenberg AFB is basically a parking lot, but it worked for us. They had nice bathrooms and a game room with a pool table, TV, and lots of board games. We arrived on Friday, and after getting our site set up, we headed to the Wine Ghetto in Lompoc.
The Wine Ghetto is 19 tasting rooms in an industrial park. Unfortunately for us, they all close at 5 pm. Actually, all the wineries in the area close at 5 pm even on weekends which we thought was slightly weird. We visited Montemar Wines and Longoria Wines. Montemar had a really cool outdoor setup with a "beach."
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| Montemar Wines |
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| Montemar Wines |
On Saturday morning, we toured the La Purisima Mission, which is considered the most completely restored Spanish mission in California.
Then we headed to our first winery of the day, Sanford Winery. We also visited Babcock Winery and Melville Winery which are right next to each other. Melville had the best rosé that I've ever had. Our last winery of the day was Foley Estates.
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| Sanford Winery |
On Sunday, we went to the Danish city of Solvang. We didn't have time to check out Ostrichland USA, but we did see the ostriches as we drove past. The town of Solvang is very cute with lots to look at.
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| The main windmill in town |
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| Closest I'm ever going to get to having a street named after me |
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| Half scale replica of the Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen |
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| Traditional Danish meal with aebleskiver (pancake balls) |
We visited four wineries on Sunday: Sunstone Winery, Buttonwood Farm Winery & Vineyard, Bridlewood Winery, and Saarloos + sons. We really enjoyed the feel of Buttonwood, and they had delicious wines. They had a Grenache Blanc that we especially liked because we have only ever seen red Grenache wine. Buttonwood also grew other produce and had goats, so Ryan enjoyed looking at those. Bridlewood was especially fancy (and expensive). Saarloos was the one that I had been most looking forward to because you could purchase a mini cupcake flight to accompany your wine flight. MINI. CUPCAKE. FLIGHT. Count me in. To be honest, their wine wasn't really anything special, it was just great because of the cupcakes. They were one of the wineries with a free military tasting, so the $11 cupcake flight was no big deal.
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| Sunstone Winery |
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| Buttonwood Farms Winery & Vineyard |
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| Loving the goats |
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| Bridlewood Winery |
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| Saarloos and the cupcake flight! |
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| Cupcake Menu |
The Lompoc flower fields are another big tourist attraction during the months of April-September. It was a little overcast all weekend, but the flowers were still gorgeous to look at. Lompoc used to supply most of the flower seeds available in stores all over the world! The city's nickname is the Flower Seed Capital of the World.
The area around Vandenberg AFB is incredibly beautiful with all the hills and open spaces. It's much different than LA, and we really enjoyed the openness and better air quality. We had a great weekend!
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