The Santa Barbara area offers a number of opportunities for excursions from whale watching to wine tasting. Here are links to further information. These trips take a half day or more so we suggest going the day before or the day after the conference begins.

Condor Express Whale Watching tours run 10:00 a.m. - 2:30 pm (see Tripadvisor for ratings). You will typically see lots of dolphins and any migrating whales passing through with gray whales most likely heading north in April, and blue whales and humpback whales also possible. If you like marine critters but don’t have the time or the sea legs for a boat trip, the SB Natural History Museum Sea Center is compact but has some nice displays of local marine life at their location on the SB pier. If zoos appeal to you, the SB Zoo also gets good reviews.

Just over the mountains from SB is the Santa Ynez Valley which grows more varieties of wine than any other region in North America. Tripadvisor has several recommendations for Wine Tasting Tours. But if you don’t want to make it a half-day affair (or more!) the Funk Zone in downtown Santa Barbara has multiple wine tasting rooms for local wineries and several good places to eat.