Santa Cruz

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Santa Cruz - 31st October

In the morning we went to a farmers market and tried some great local produce and stopped off to buy a pumpkin pie seeing as it was Halloween. We then walked along the coast of Santa Cruz, dipped our toes in the sea and walked up the pier where we saw some sea lions, there must have been at least 20 of them lying on the jetty underneath the pier and they were making a right racket! It was funny to watch them slide in and out of the water and they seemed to be having a very nice time! Santa Cruz had a very summery feel to it with lots of people playing volleyball on the beach and riding about on coasters, Doddys favourite bike! We decided that it would be a place we would both like to live. We then got back in the car driving through Big Sur, stopping off to see some giant Californian Redwoods, they really are massive! We bypassed a bar that was throwing a Halloween party as the people didn’t appear to be very friendly. We instead stopped at a shop to buy a beer where we found out that there had been a mountain lion spotted a couple of days earlier, only a mile away from our campsite that eve. The campsite was right on the beach and a very reasonable $21 (that’s more like it!) where we got chatting to two guys Eddie and Steve who lived in San Fran. Whilst having a Halloween drink with them we were paid a visit by a couple of raccoons on the scavenge for any leftovers. Very soon we were surrounded by no less than 8 of the little blighters! Quite unsettling but we managed to shoo them away after they’d posed for a few photos. We ate pumpkin pie and had a few drinks round the campfire before heading to sleep with the sound of the west coast waves.

Sunday 1st

An extra hour in bed as the clocks had changed was definitely appreciated. We headed to the local beach but soon left as we were inundated with flies! So instead we found another one a few miles further south where we sunbathed for a bit (sunbathing on the 1st of November, can’t be bad!) Before continuing down the coast where we spotted another beach with over 100 elephant seals snoozing on the sand. We finally stopped for the day 40 miles north of the playground of the rich and famous, Santa Barbara where we spent the night at Flying Flags RV Park. It was spotlessly clean and had a lovely pool and two hot tubs and after soaking for a bit we headed into the small town and had some famous split pea soup which was delicious and I’m sure all those peas did us the world of good!

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