Our second holiday trip was an excursion to Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Francisco. Santa Cruz is one of those towns that holds a certain place in surfing lore and I wanted to see what all the hype was about. While we were that far south, we checked out the Monterey Bay Aquarium and downtown San Fran.
A couple of summers ago my wife and I were having a pizza at a bar in Yosemite Valley, we were rather undecided about where we would settle down and we were discussing possible towns to live in. "Fort Bragg? Nah, too small. Brookings? Nope, too small and the surf is fickle. Santa Cruz or San Francisco? No way, way too many people." At the point we said, "Santa Cruz?", the bartender said, "Check out Arcata, in Humboldt County...It's Santa Cruz, but thirty years ago". That pretty much sealed it for us. After we spent almost a month in and around Yosemite, we drove north to Humboldt and the rest is history. But we never forgot about Santa Cruz, so we put it on our list of roadtrips and places to visit.
Fast forward a year and a half, and here we are in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz sits about an hour south of San Francisco and at a little bend in the coastline that means well groomed waves year around and offshore winds all winter. Surfing here is a part of life. I saw more cars with board racks than without. The place definitely has some solid waves, but also solid crowds on the waves. I was lucky enough to see the famous surf spot 'Steamer Lane' on one of the best days of the year. It was glassy, offshore, and absolutely reeling. The right wave would break for almost a half-mile. Can you imagine surfing a wave for that long? I'd probably go insane. I watched the wave for a bit and then got on with exploring the town.
We were lucky enough to arrive in Santa Cruz during the end of the Monarch migration. They follow the coast to warmer weather in the winter and back up the coast to cooler weather during the summer. We found a Eucalyptus grove which had around 20,000 monarchs flitting about the treetops and we just laid on the ground and took it all in. There really aren't words to describe how amazing it is to see so many butterflies in such a small area or the sounds that so many butterflies flying about in one place makes.
After soaking in the majesty of the monarchs, I needed a surf. I was able to surf a couple blocks away from 'Steamer Lane' at a solid little point break with around two dozen other people. Two dozen is a crowd in Humboldt, but I managed to snipe a solid number of waves in my hour long session. The wave was great. There is something inviting about a chest-high, glassy wave in front of million dollar homes. For a few minutes out there I imagined that this was my homebreak and I was surfing in front of my sweet, oceanfront house...and then a clean-up set rolled through...I managed to avoid the macker of the set, pulled my head out of my ass, and caught the last solid set wave. I rode it in, changed, and then found a pub with Justine. We shopped for a bit in the downtown area, which is well put together. It's absolutely chock full of "surf-shops", I put it in parenthesis only because they had more hoodies than surfboards...but I digress. While I'm on the digression, let me just say something about the state of "surf-culture"...it's become a commodity and an image to be sold. Just look around you next time you're around a crowd of high school kids. How many of them are wearing surf brand hoodies? Then ask yourself if they looked like they've ever woken up before dawn, called the bouy reports, scraped their car windows, went out, and charged the surf in the cold, gray morning...
We spent a couple days in Santa Cruz and then we drove south to Monteray Bay. Our mission was to check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had heard it was spectacular, but we had no idea how spectacular it was. We spent the entire day wandering around the exhibits, but I could have spent another week there. They have so many huge tanks it's insane. I'm talking 30-40 foot high tanks with actual wave machines to help the fishies feel at home. It's certainly one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I'd love to just spend days there, just sitting on the benches and watching the fish swim. There is something quite mesmerizing about the entire scene.
After spending as much time as possible in Monterey and Santa Cruz we headed back North towards our little slice of Northern California paradise. On the way through San Fran we stopped in Union Square to experience the madness that the City is. It's fun in small doses, but I like it quiet and uncrowded.
Stay tuned for more adventures. Sorry about taking so long in between postings. Hang in there and check in every now and then for more pictures, stories, and words of wisdom.
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