This sunny, 166-mile romp is centered in Santa Barbara, a coastal resort where bougainvillea flowers climb white walls and an old California mission drowses in the sun. Among the city's ravishing charms are a Mediterranean climate, gardens, broad beaches, a pretty yacht harbor, and mountains tinged with Impressionist pinks and blues.

Overview
The drive makes two loops. First it jogs westward from Santa Barbara, visiting the flower fields of sleepy Lompoc and the wine and horse country of the newly glamorous Santa Ynez Valley. Then, circling back to Santa Barbara, it takes off eastward, to the mission city of Ventura and the orange groves of the Ojai Valley.

Start in Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara was settled by the Spanish in the late 1700s and lived graciously during California's later rancho period. In the late 19th century, it became a health resort for wealthy Easterners after a guidebook writer touted it as a "Mecca for the moribund." When a 1925 earthquake leveled the haphazardly built downtown, civic leaders rebuilt in the Spanish colonial style that now unifies the city.

Queen of the Missions
On a slope overlooking town stands the venerable Mission Santa Barbara (2201 Laguna St.; +1 805 682 4713; http://santabarbaramission.org). At the old mission, founded in 1786, it's easy to picture gray-robed padres saying Mass for the Indians.

Franciscan friars still reside at this Queen of the Missions, and Sunday services continue in the colorfully painted church. The sandstone Roman facade and adobe walls demonstrate how missionaries integrated European architecture with the rude but handsome materials—mud, stone, and timber—available on the California frontier.