Tag Archives: Santa Cruz

This morning (Saturday) we got picked up at the San Jose Elks Lodge by my cousin Beth and her husband Keith. They offered to act as our tour-guides for the day and take us to see the Monarch butterflies in Santa Cruz Natural Bridges State Beach. We also planned to check out the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz while we were there.

We left little dog ‘Coach’ in the Coach since we planned to be back before suppertime.

We made good time getting to Santa Cruz on CA-17 and parked on the street opposite the Natural Bridges State Park (←link) parking lot, therefore saving ourselves the parking fee. It sure is great to have local tour-guides! 🙂

I took a picture of Stilla, Cousin Beth, and her husband Keith in front of the entrance sign…

then Keith returned the favor and took a rare photograph of Stilla and I.

Informational placard at the entrance to the State Beach.

The park website says that the Monarch Grove in the state beach park provides a temporary home for up to 100,000 Monarch butterflies. From late fall into winter, the Monarchs form a “city in the trees.” The area’s mild seaside climate and eucalyptus grove provide a safe place for monarchs to roost until spring.

We took the Monarch Trail in search of butterflies.

We came across the strangest tree while walking the trail. The tree had grown onto itself… don’t recall seeing that before.

We continued down the trail in search of butterflies… if anyone told me years ago that I’d be doing that – I’d call ’em crazy 🙂

We reached the boardwalk area of the trail:

And we soon found the butterflies… they were hiding behind all the people:

A lot of folks take their butterfly watching seriously; there were people with telescopes, binoculars, and cameras with telephoto lenses…

This guy really got down with the butterflies (literally) 🙂

Informational placards:

We sat down with Beth & Keith to enjoy the show.

More informational placards:

And some pictures of Monarch butterflies:

After getting our fill of butterfly watching, we walked over to the visitor center.

There were a few neat “live” displays in the visitors center:

OK, this one (below) wasn’t “live” but the caterpillars (above) were.

Beth aced the ‘Monarch Madness Quiz’ on the wall of the visitors center. I missed a few of the questions 🙁 But in my defense, Beth is a teacher by profession.

And as we have all come to know; all visitor centers have their exits through the gift shop:

We walked down to the beach from the visitor center:

It was a really nice beach. We hung out for a while.

Here’s the only remaining natural bridge (below) that the beach was named after. There were originally three of these.

Wikipedia® (←link) says that wave erosion carved the arches and then cut away the cliffs leaving only islands. Of the three original arches only the middle one remains. The outermost arch fell during the early 20th century and the inner arch collapsed during a storm in 1980.

Here’s a few ‘action’ pics of the waves breaking on the arch:

I even got a chance to get my feet wet while we checked out the beach.

We watched some younger folks that seemed to be going through some sort of initiation ritual, possibly a college fraternity.

We headed over to the Santa Cruz Wharf for lunch. You may recall that Stilla and I met an old Army buddy of mine here last Tuesday, I wrote about that in this post.

We had a great seafood dinner at Gilda’s:

Lunch at Gilda’s on the Santa Cruz Wharf with Keith & Beth.

After an awesome lunch we drove on over to the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot.

The Mystery Spot is a ‘gravitational anomaly’ located in the redwoods outside Santa Cruz according to their website. Check out what Wikipedia® says about this place by clicking HERE.

Car covered in Mystery Spot bumper stickers seen in parking lot near entrance.

The entrance fees were pretty reasonable.

Our tour-guide led us up the hill after entertaining us with a lot of ‘tongue-in-cheek’ humor.

He demonstrated that a couple boards laid out on the concrete slabs were level…

then he asked for volunteers to stand opposite each other and take note of who is taller than the other…

then he had the volunteers switch sides… and to everyone’s amazement; the person on the downhill side would ‘magically’ appear to be taller.

A couple other volunteers tried it out as well:

Beth & Keith checked out the ‘anomaly’ after the crowd left… I’m unsure of the result!?!

We marched up the steep concrete walkway.

Our tour-guide demonstrated some more ‘anomalies’ outside the tilted shack that he said slid down the hill to it’s present position… not quite sure I believe that one, do you?

Here (below) he demonstrates how a cue ball appears to roll uphill away from the shack. He demonstrated the same thing by pouring some water onto the board as well.

Then we got to play around in the tilted shack:

This heavy metal ball (below) was suspended from the ceiling. It was harder to push away from the wall than it was to push towards the wall from its natural level position. Weird, huh?

I was climbing the wall (literally).

We got one more demonstration regarding ‘perspective’ and some more bad jokes from our nice tour-guide, then he passed out bumper stickers.

At the end of the tour, we made the trek back down to the bottom of the hill… much easier going down 🙂

And then we did a quick tour of the gift shop:

After that unique and interesting experience, Keith & Beth drove us back to the Coach. We made pretty good time with not too much traffic. What a great day… I have to give Beth & Keith an A+ tour-guide rating. Maybe they should look into starting a side business as local tour-guides 🙂

We made plans to get together again for dinner at my cousin Phil’s house on Sunday evening. Check back for more on that…

California

Old Army Buddy Reunion & Dinner at Aunt Donna’s (Elks Lodge 522 – San Jose, CA)

2015/11/11 davidhobden@mac.com

We made plans today (Tuesday) to meet with an old Army buddy of mine that lives in the Santa Cruz area. So we left the San Jose Elks Lodge in time to meet on the Santa Cruz Wharf (←link) by 11 AM for a lunchtime get-together.

We drove through the toll gate and took a ticket to park on the pier.

We found my old Army buddy Adam Breed near the end of the pier with his fiancé Shivan and daughter Teagan.

We had a great lunch at Woodies Cafe on the Wharf while we caught up on old times.

After a fine lunch and lots of conversation, we did a little seal watching together from the end of the wharf:

Birds fighting over a fish with a seal off the Santa Cruz Pier.

Then we checked out all the seals that were hanging out below the pier:

The Santa Cruz Wharf has some convenient open areas in the middle for seal watching:

And of course, we had to check out some of the stores on the pier as well:

Art-deco water fountain on the Santa Cruz Wharf.

Shivan helped Teagan get a drink from the scary looking water fountain.

It was really great spending time with Adam and catching up on recent events. It’s been over 10 years since we were stationed together in Katterbach, Germany where we deployed for a year-long tour in Iraq together.

Here’s a few pics I found of Adam, both before and during our Iraq tour together:

DSCF2559 copy — Adam Breed in Katterbach, Germany circa. 2003.

Adam is a first-class welder/fabricator. Here he is making a protective .50 cal machine gun turret for the back of a 5 ton truck out of scrap parts.

And he fabricated these troop seats (below) to be mounted in the middle of a 5 ton truck bed, in order for the troops to be able to face out while being transported instead of towards each other with their backs exposed.

Adam in Tikrit, Iraq (2004).

He was my driver in the truck below during our convoy from Kuwait thru Baghdad to Tikrit in northern Iraq.

Here’s Adam catching some Zzzz’s on top of the truck during a rest halt.

Now this was going to be a project:

Adam and other members of the Service & Recovery (S&R) / Welding Section of the 601st Direct Support Battalion, 1st Infantry Division putting another battle-damaged HMMWV together.

Too bad we don’t have an ‘after’ pic, eh Adam?

We said our goodbyes and ‘see-ya-laters’… Adam had to get back home and start his night shift at work by 7 PM. Take care Adam… stay in touch and we hope to see you guys again soon!

After we left Adam and Shivan, we drove around the corner to the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse and Surfing Museum:

The Lighthouse / Museum was closed so we just walked around the cliff edge and checked out the scenery and wildlife:

Then we were mesmerized by the crazy surfer antics in the Monterey Bay below us:

It was hard to believe these guys didn’t run over each other while catching some of those waves:

After watching the crazy, (or were they just skilled?), surfers for a while, we decided this wasn’t a sport we’d like to take up… so we headed north from Santa Cruz on Hwy-1 towards San Francisco.

It wasn’t long before we came upon the Pigeon Point Lighthouse:

We pulled into the parking area off Pigeon Point Rd and walked out to the lighthouse.

The website says this about the Pigeon Point Lighthouse: “Perched on a cliff on the central California coast, 50 miles south of San Francisco, the 115-foot Pigeon Point Lighthouse, one of the tallest lighthouses in America, has been guiding mariners since 1872. Its five-wick lard oil lamp, and first-order Fresnel lens, comprised of 1,008 prisms, was first lit at sunset, November 15, 1872. The lens stands 16 feet tall, 6 feet in diameter, and weighs 2,000 pounds. Now on display in the Fog Signal building, it sat in a lantern room constructed at the Lighthouse Service’s general depot in New York before being shipped around the Horn. Although the original Fresnel lens is no longer in use, the lighthouse is still an active U.S. Coast Guard aid to navigation using a Vega Marine Rotating Beacon.”

Land-side view of the lighthouse.

The lighthouse was closed for repairs so all we could do was walk around the grounds.
Per the CA State website: “In December 2001, a section of the iron belt course on the exterior of the lighthouse fell off. The lighthouse will remain closed until the structure can be restored. The lighthouse may still be viewed from the grounds. For more information go to Lighthouse Restoration”

Stilla on the whale-watching platform at Pigeon Point Lighthouse.

Sea-side view of the lighthouse and adjoining buildings.

Notice the huge fog horns protruding from the outbuilding (below).

Informational placards at Pigeon Point Lighthouse:

We walked down to the beach.

After we finished checking out the lighthouse and beach, we kept going north on Hwy-1 towards Half Moon Bay.

As soon as we pulled into the Half Moon Bay parking area, my cousin Phil texted us about dinner at my Aunt Donna’s house. It was already past 4 PM and we were expected for dinner by 6… we had to hurry back!

Traffic was good heading back into San Jose until we got about 18 miles from the Elks Lodge…

then it was stop-n-go traffic the rest of the way… I think our max speed at times was only 20 mph 🙁

I sure don’t miss commuting… what a mess! We made it back to the lodge by 6 PM or so. My cousin Phil met us there to transport us to Aunt Donna’s so we wouldn’t get lost. Thanks again Phil! We took our little dog ‘Coach’ who was happy to see us again after being alone in the Coach again for 8 to 9 hours 🙁 and jumped in Phil’s truck for a ride to Aunt Donna’s house.