Author and world traveler Pico Iyer has it just right: You’ve got to head to the hills when you’re roaming Central California. These are the same magical hills where the Queen of England’s horse whisperer built his ranch and the dethroned King of Pop created his Neverland. Where the world’s best bicyclist brought his team each winter to train for the Tour de France. Where Davy Crockett traded in his coonskin cap for a vineyard and country inn. Where two middle-aged guys named Miles and Jack careened Sideways onscreen chasing women, swilling pinot noir, and transforming a string of bucolic towns into tourist hubs.
Cowboys and celebrities, retirees and wine growers, oenophiles and ostriches; they all coexist peacefully in this corner of Santa Barbara County, a world of sprawling ranches and rolling hillsides quilted with vineyards and surrounded by the Santa Ynez and San Rafael mountains.
In Great Escapes: Southern California, I explore the Santa Ynez Valley in a chapter called “Take This Drive and Love It.”
“The beauty of driving through the mountains behind Santa Barbara is that it’s a perfect place and way for getting lost,” says Iyer, who grew up in Santa Barbara and shares a first-person passage in the chapter. “And whatever you stumble into will have the feeling of a rare discovery that not so many people know about.”
You can easily drive from one country town to the next along a pair of country roads (CA 154 and 246) that ramble across the valley and crisscross near Santa Ynez. The 2004 movie Sideways put Central California’s wine country on the map of popular interest after so many years in the shadow of Napa and Sonoma.
Less well known is that the Santa Ynez Valley also is an equestrian paradise, even though Seabiscuit, an Academy Award nominee in 2005, was filmed here, too. From Kentucky Derby winners to dainty miniature show horses, more than 30 equine breeds thrive on the valley’s ranches and family farms. As Gigi Meyer noted in The New York Times, “It’s hard to say which valley town is the horsiest.”
Or which of the valley’s many wineries is the tastiest.
Those are questions you’ll want to ponder for yourself as you wind your way north from Santa Barbara along Highway 154 on one of the prettiest drives Southern California has to offer.
