Blakey was a great tour guide, exploring Santa Cruz and its surrounding area with us.
We drove up to UC Santa Cruz. I didn’t get photos, but the place seemed like a ski resort without snow. The buildings didn’t look anything like any college I’ve ever seen. It is located on top of a mountain, and looks out to Santa Cruz and the Pacific.
We continued up the coast, turning inland to visit the Beauregard Vineyards in the little town of Bonny Doon. Of course redwood trees persisted there.
We headed back to the coast, parked along the PCH, crossed railroad tracks on the way for a hike along the coast. We ran into a photographer who mentioned there were quite a few nudists sunbathing at the beach below. They were pretty far away, and I didn’t have a telephoto, so sorry to those who wanted details. I was, however, able to take a sweet shot of a recently harvested brussels sprouts field.
On Saturday, Blakey took us to Pacific Avenue in downtown for a birthday brunch for Ellen. There were big preparations going on for the Halloween festivities that night. Apparently, Santa Cruz is well known for this, and the streets are filled with costumed party-goers. We opted to skip it.
We ended the tour at the Crow’s Nest, a beach/marina restaurant with great calamari.
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Really enjoying your posts!! A great break from my daily email…..but it sure doesn’t look like the peace corps!
Sounds fun.. I remember seeing UC Santa Cruz once but what I remember is a lot of forest with curving roads/lanes connecting the buildings, which seemed rather isolated from each other. I heard that it was built this way partly to avoid the opptys for student unrest when you have a tightly knit campus with large gathering places as in Berkeley. But for some reason, I don’t remember it being high up or having great views.. maybe we just saw a small part of the campus. Keep the posts coming, they’re very interesting!