I woke up very early but let Mark sleep until 7. We left pretty quickly after that, had breakfast at a McDonald’s in Hanford, and drove the 200 miles to Santa Cruz pretty much in one big chunk, except to get gas and a restroom stop. Most of the drive wasn’t very scenic, but we marveled at the endless fields of strawberries, fruit trees, and other produce, including the many enormous dump trucks full of Roma tomatoes that we had a to pass on the interstate. The massive and water-expensive agriculture seemed all the more stunning once we figured out from Wikipedia that despite its ubiquitous presence in the Central Valley (and elsewhere), agriculture makes up less than 2 % of California’s vast economy. The prettiest part of the drive came before Watsonville, when we were going by the San Luis reservoir, but all in all, no spectacular sights today until we got to Santa Cruz. Then we got to see the ocean, after 3,000 miles of driving around in landlocked areas!
First, we had lunch, though (at O’Mei’s, a Chinese restaurant I already knew). Then, we headed to Natural Bridges State Beach at the end of Santa Cruz’ West Cliff drive, and watched the tide come in and kids playing in huge crashing waves. We stayed for over an hour, just watching the wave action, and then took off along West Cliff until we got to the turn for Alta Ave.
We said hi to Rick and then went for a little stroll along the coastline. We watched the surfers at Lighthouse / Maverick Point, and also saw a couple of playful otters in the kelp, as well as the brown pelicans and the cormorans. Just seeing and hearing the waves crashing into the rocks along the coastline was so much fun. It’s nice to be on the seaside! We stayed out for a couple more hours and went back to Rick and Carolyn’s at about 5 pm. We hung out and talked for a bit with Rick and Carolyn, and had a lovely makeshift dinner of omelette and bacon around 7:30, then talked some more until I decided around 10 pm that it was time for me to go to bed!