Ventura and Ojai

Ventura is a lovely, lively, and slightly funky old beach town just north of Los Angeles and south of Santa Barbara. I’ve been there quite a few times and to me, it is the city that most epitomizes the cultural and geographic transition from Southern California to the Central Coast. The charming little mountain town of Ojai lies about 20 minutes due north of Ventura down a winding mountain road. It too is definitely worth a visit.

Since our time in the area was limited, we focused on visiting the historic downtown business districts of both Ojai and Ventura. From a photographic standpoint, both cities presented challenges in terms of visual clutter. In Ojai, road construction, heavy traffic and on-street parking made it impossible to take a photo of any building that didn’t include cars, road signs and construction equipment. Therefore, I have no Ojai photos to post.

The challenges in Ventura were a bit different. Since the primary thoroughfare through the downtown business district, Main Street, has been converted into a pedestrian mall, traffic, parked cars, and road construction were not impediments to taking uncluttered photographs. Instead, the outdoor seating areas left over from the Covid years made it impossible to capture the beauty of these historic buildings without also capturing the wood railings, beer-logo umbrellas, and tables and chairs which now share the landscape. I have included a few of the better shots just to give you a sense of a few of these beautiful buildings.

Our trip was cut a day short by a family emergency so we never did make it to the beach or the old fishing pier, which dates back to the late 1800’s. I’ve got some photos of both from previous visits so I’ll post them in the archives eventually.