My all time retirement destination is Santa Barbara. The perfect melding of the mountains and the sea.
Check out Montecito.
CA is incredibly beautiful. I hate to see it bashed so much here. There are lots of great Conservatives here too.
We stay at the Montecito Inn whenever we're down there. If I had to live in SoCA it'd definitely make my list.
We fell in love with the area around Rancho Murietta and thought seriously about moving there in spite of all the crazy whackos in Sacramento. What keeps us from moving to anywhere in CA is their gun laws.