Saturday, April 29, 2006
Scotts Valley, Santa Cruz, and San Juan Bautista
About a half hour to forty-five minutes south of Santa Clara on Rt. 17 is a little place called Scotts Valley. We started Saturday off by stopping at the Roaring Camp, 4 miles outside the city of Scotts Valley. Roaring Camp offers train rides into a Redwood forest on a steam engine built in the late 1800s. The advantage of taking the train ride is that you don’t have to hunt for the Redwoods by yourself, you are seated the whole time, and you get colorful history by the tour guide. When the steam engine let out its first whistle, Natalie clung to us and wasn’t quite sure she liked it. Then, I reminded her that trains say “choo choo” and she was golden. Every time the train whistled, she would say “choo choo” and smile. We enjoyed seeing the trees and learning different facts about Redwoods, such as that they drink through their leaves and although they grow to be hundreds of feet tall, their root system only goes into the soil 3-6 feet.
After the morning train ride and lunch at Roaring Camp, we loaded back into the car and headed down Rt. 17 / Rt. 1 to Santa Cruz. Here, we walked a long the boardwalk gawking at the weirdoes in the frigid water (we were wearing pants and/or sweaters and it was overcast). Yes, there were actual people in the water without wetsuits. We continue beyond the boardwalk to the wharf. We’d heard sea lions hang out at the wharf and wanted to see if we could find some. We murmured to one another that there wasn’t really a place for sea lions to hang out, but toward the end of the wharf, I could hear the barking of what sounded to be rather large beasts. We peered into some cutouts in the wharf and saw about a dozen sea lions swimming lazily in the water, calling out to one another. Then we noticed several snoozing on the support beams of the pier. It was amazing to see them so close up. Natalie just kept pointing them out. She absolutely loved them.
We capped off the day by heading east to San Juan Bautista, a small mission town located in the San Juan Valley amidst rolling hills and beautiful farm land. Their famous mission was founded in the late 1700s and hasn’t been changed much since. It was relaxing to walk along the mission path. After dinner, we headed back north to Santa Clara.