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Published: January 22nd 2007
L.A. and Vacaville
We left Tucson and headed to L.A. the night. On the way we went to Joshua Tree National Park and stopped in the town of Joshua Tree for food. We found a place called The Beatnik Café and I ordered a meatless meatball sub..delicious. After spending the night at Kelci’s, we left around 0930 to make it to Vacaville so we could join Shay and her boyfriend at his mom’s house for New Years Eve dinner. Dinner was great. Mike’s mom and her husband are always great company and some of the most generous people I’ve met. We went back to Shay’s around 930 pm and played Jeopardy. We were in bed before midnight and missed ringing in the New Year. On New Year Day we left Shay’s around 3pm to go to the luxury camping resort, Costanoa. It is in Pescadaro, CA, just north of Santa Cruz.
Costanoa
Not a great campground, not a great not-a-campground, best describes a very pricey resort (considering you are sleeping in tent cabins) in Pescadero, CA, which is just north of Santa Cruz. We spent 4 nights there, with Shay and her boyfriend joining us for the 2nd and 3rd
nights. Shay was nice enough to purchase advance Ranger lead tour tickets for the Elephant Seals of Ano Nuevo State Park. It was fun walking up and down all the dunes to get to the beach and see all the seals lounging about, moving only to better position themselves, chase another seal or take a swim. We had dinner at the restaurant of Costanoa. It was a great dinner, but way too pricey, not unlike the resort itself. When we arrived the first day, we did not get any of the Aveda toiletries (I asked one of the housekeepers on the 3rd day for some) that came with the room. On the 2nd day we didn’t even get towels. The included cold breakfast was ok. They had great scones. The bathroom could have been cleaner. Towels piled up and overflowed the basket and were not picked up for a couple of days. There was a door broken off on one of the outside showers that had remained off at least since my daughter was here in September. There are no laundry facilities. Oh, and as far as the tent cabins go, one key fits all. I found the last two
facts pretty that pretty amazing. I did have a fabulous massage (thank you Shay) on the first night I was there. One of the best deep tissue massages I have ever had. The day Shay left we followed them to Santa Cruz to go to the boardwalk for deep fried Oreos. Unfortunately, the boardwalk was pretty much shut down for the winter (except for an arcade), so we went to the arcade, got $5 worth of tokens and played several games of air hockey, always fun, and a few games of pinball. Shay and Mike took off for Vacaville and Jim and I went to downtown Santa Cruz and walked around. It is a community of well under 100,000 but it has a great, vibrant downtown. A good bathroom stop is the bus station. We went back to Costanoa for out last night there. It was so windy. More than Death Valley. We had 65 mph gusts in that tent cabin. A few times it felt like the entire tent (including the platform) might flip over, but it held well.
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ted
non-member comment
beatnik cafe
hello there- i ran across your joshua tree photos while searching for images of the beatnik cafe, a place where i used to work. i'm making a little home-made film/scrapbook & was hoping you would allow me to use a couple of your shots. please write me, if you have a minute...thanks!! ted