Santa
Cruz, California: 1997 to present
"We're all here because we're not all there!"
Santa Cruz sits in California where the Redwoods meet the wine country meets
the coast. Around 50,000 lucky souls share this little piece of paradise. We
moved here in 1997, and live right in the middle of the redwoods. There are
over 40 of them on our land. The photo on the left was taken on
the
property after a storm that lasted a few days in October 2004. The sun came up
in the morning, and the mist poured out of the trees: stunning. Not a lot of
rain here, but when it comes it makes for some good scenery.
We are 15 minutes from the ocean, and 15-20
minutes from several local wineries! Carmel is an hour away,
Pacific Grove about the same, and Big Sur an
hour and a half. On the urban level, San Francisco is an hour and a quarter
drive, and Berkeley an hour and a half.
The town is full of characters, and has a history full of characters. There was Charley Parkhurst, the cross-dressing stagecoach driver who
was one of the first women registered to vote in the US, because she pretended
to be a man. This was in 1867, but her spiritual offspring are numerous
here today.
If you haven't guessed, we do love it here!
A worthy cause!
Santa Cruz has what each of us needs. Here's a partial list of the
highlights:
1.
West Cliff for Sunday afternoon bike rides,
boogie-boarding and surfing,
2. Pacific Garden Mall downtown, for coffee on the terrace
watching the world go by and feeling like you're on a Boulevard in Paris,
without the cold and rain most of the year.
3. Bookshop Santa Cruz, one of the last survivors of
the eclectic and earnest bookstores that thrived with the hippies, founded in
the late 60s and bought by the parents of the current owner in 1973. She (the
current owner) is the granddaughter
of the woman who looked after our children during the breaks at
Happy Valley School, Mrs. C., until her
retirement in 2007 at 93 or 94. We didn't ask! Below, Mrs. C. poses with Charlie
at his 2007 "Promotion" from Happy Valley.
4. the remaining hippies and street
people,
5. abundant opportunities for playing
youth soccer on different
levels,
6. Jack O'Neill, inventor of the wetsuit for surfing,
originator of the O'Neill
mark that you now see throughout the world, and as you can see in the photo, a
true individual, US style,
7. not forgetting the star of our show on the Monterey Bay, the Pacific Ocean, with its
swells
and beaches and cooling breezes almost every night.
And talking of beaches, we went to Zelda's in Capitola for brunch on Mother's Day in May
2004 with the Hanlons, and the boys found this
pleasing diversion! Zelda's has a deck right on the beach, which helps amuse the
children while the parents converse. . . .
8. the most
beautiful University campus that you have ever seen (UCSC, the
University of California at Santa Cruz, or Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp,
depending on your viewpoint, voted in 2002 or 3 one of the best party schools in the
entire US!). The campus is an old ranch, the Cowell Ranch, that looks out over Monterey Bay from
above the west side of town,
9. and a tourist train line from the
Boardwalk into the Redwoods,
and with a
special Halloween train ride in the mountains.
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You need to keep your wits about you in Santa Cruz:
Fergus caught this
one, below, on Walnut Street. Think about it! Is the law a
moral profession?
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Above is Paula's surf cafe, where we love the
$1.99 "Basic Breakfast", and surfboards, surfing magazines,
surfing posters and, yes, real live surfers!
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10% of the votes cast in Santa Cruz County in the 2002
presidential election went with no apologies to Ralph Nader. The bumper
sticker that most attracted our attention, until Marie-Hélène realized the
"jeu de mots" and banned it: Gotta Lick Bush and Dick! You're right: not funny at all!
Especially not at Alex's Catholic pre-school!
Below, these road signs at the entrance of town have apparently become
collectors' items, with the collectors being local college students, according
to city managers. The signs disappear almost as soon as they are put up, with
the regrettable result that none currently survive. The City of Santa Cruz
remains a nuclear-free zone, by municipal ordinance.
In an effort to encourage balance, we also do notice a few problem areas, apart
from living in the middle of a serious earthquake area.
There is the effect of storms on local roads and electric
pylons. We experience power cuts with monotonous regularity, as the protected
trees fall on the wires, and every so often a major piece of road slides down
the hillside in a river of mud. This happened to Vine Hill Road in early
2006,
and we drove up to explore (see the photo on the right). It took about a year to
reopen the road to through traffic.
Trees fall regularly on our and our neighbors' property.
Here is a photo of one that landed on our luckless motorhome, and below is a
whole clump of Bay on our neighbors' land that was eroded by the creek and fell
in a storm in early 2008.
The Redwoods are truly beautiful, but should the County refuse to cut down
trees, however beautiful, that create a real risk of car crashes? That is a part
of the County philosophy. The beautiful trees are left standing if it can
possibly be justified. Even if they cut into the tarmac on the side of the road.
Some local plaintiffs lawyers have made a fortune on that one.
Also, there are no school buses in our part of the county, which
is a particular concern of ours because for a while there, several years, we needed to shuttle
our six children to their two to five different schools (the
number of schools depended on the time). Nick,
Daphné,
Alban and Tom
have now graduated high school and moved,
hesitantly, on to college.
Of course, it is very hard for any of them to want to leave Santa Cruz!!
