Santa Cruz March 11th

After another great sleep, we were off and out the door by 8:30 heading to Santa Cruz about 25 minutes away. Another gorgeous sunny morning. First up, the "Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk" which hosts an amusement park. Of course we were early so it was easy to walk through it and see the beach. None of the rides were going yet. This beach is all torn up as well with tons of debris from the storms. There were quite a few groups setting up on the sand getting ready to spend the day, including some volleyball and a pile of Girl Guides.

I had to take a picture of this at the Haunted House. Pretty scarey for kids. This has been there for many years. She moves and laughs the whole time.

Next off to the Santa Cruz Boat Harbour and Walton Lighthouse.

See all of the debris on the beach.

Break water for the lighthouse and boat harbour

Next off to the scenic West Cliff Drive along the Pacific.

Surfer's Museum

Surfer's Beach

The stairs down for the surfers to reach the water.

It's nice that the city provides parking places along the way so you can get out and look at the views. For people who ride bikes, the sidewalk is wide and spacious, also good for joggers and people who like to just walk.

Happened to notice this Natural Arch

At one of the stops, I heard this roar and saw a blow hole spewing water up so of course we had to see if we could get closer.

Ray waiting for the blow hole as I watched the waves to give him time to get his camera ready!

Of course by the time we got there the tide had gone out just enough to not blow as high. The last stop on the scenic drive was the over look of the Natural Bridges State Beach. 

Turning around we decided to take the same road back to town as it's so gorgeous. A lot of the houses along this road are vintage and restored or the new ones are made to look old.

We saw lots of vintage cars (Ray's favourie a '63 Vet Convertible) and vans (many of which emited a funny smell from the interior if you know what I mean!) along this drive which brought to mind the song Surfin USA. ... and then there was this below???

Time for lunch. We carried on to the Santa Cruz Wharf to a restaurant called Riva. It had great reviews and certainly lived up to them.

Notice the couple of on tap local brews on the table!

We both had their Seven Sea's Dinner, which is a whole bunch of seafood in a lovely buttery wine broth with bread to soak it up. Yummm.  Reasonable prices as well.

After eating we strolled along the rest of the wharf seeing all of the people fishing and crabbing. There were even holes cut into the wharf with railings so you could see the sea lions basking.

How is this for "Steam Punk"?

Time to go home and rescue Freya. What a lovely trip. We would definitely come back to Santa Cruz again. They seem to have the most access to view the ocean.