February 17-20, 2016

Santa Cruz-- History was made in July 1885 when 3 Hawaiian princes were in the water with long surf boards made of local redwoods and milled into shape of traditional Hawaiian o’lo boards – This is the first account of surfing anywhere in the Americas…..

Our time in Santa Cruz was a little unsettled – the crowds were unbelievable – I think it was a combination of good weather and Spring break starting.  The hardest part was we couldn’t secure a camp site, so each day we had to move or enter into a lottery to see if they would pick our name for a site.  This took time out of our day as most lotteries are drawn at noon.  We found out quite quickly that you are not able to park in any shopping parking lots or on the Street as we received a knock on our door at 7:00am one morning from the police “this is not a campground – you have 20 minutes to pack it up and move out of here or get a citation.”  Yikes….

Another thing I learned in Santa Cruz is that there are 5 kinds of hippies – the retired hippie – the relocated hippie – the neo hippie – the local hippie and lastly the homeless hippie – it was this one that created a problem for me.  Way too many sketchy characters!   I am not too sure which hippie category Bill and I would fit into???

We were able to enjoy morning runs through the campgrounds, Bill had some good surf sessions and SUPed also.  We enjoyed walking downtown  – and had a good shop at the Patagonia Outlet.

We did meet a new friend in Santa Cruz – one afternoon while Bill was out surfing I met Kevin from Vancouver Island in the parking lot - I was guarding our gear in.  He spotted our plates and came over to chat with me.  We chatted for quite some time – he was travelling by himself and had 1 month off – he felt the same way as me with the sketchy characters and didn’t feel good about the campground he was checked into for the night (maybe the homeless hippies) so I invited him to come and stay with us – we had a nice visit at our ocean side campsite or as he referred to it -our glorified parking spot.    Hope you had a safe trip home Kevin and see you again someday!