Santa Cruz to Halfmoon Bay

I had kept in touch with Pete, my KOA neighbour from Eureka, a bit during my trip and figured that since I was coming back through California maybe we could meet up again. He happened to have the weekend free so he came down to meet me in Santa Cruz. I got up and had some breakfast and then went exploring the shore a little bit before Pete arrived. He got to the city around noon we met up and went for a mountain bike ride at Wilder Ranch. It was a pretty fun ride, not very technical, very hilly. Part of it was along the coast, which was absolutely beautiful and it reaffirmed that I made the right decision to come back to California. I had been talking to Anne the other day while debating whether or not to come back to California. She said "Kate, you were born by the ocean, you love the ocean. Go there." Very good advice, I just feel more relaxed and inspired by the water, the desert doesn't do it for me.

After the ride we went back downtown to the beach and went for a swim. The waves were friggin' huge, a little scary actually! I got thrashed around a few times but it was really fun. Nice and refreshing.

There is an amusement park right on the boardwalk in downtown Santa Cruz and they have a really cool wooden roller coaster. You don't have to pay to get into the park, just for the rides, so we bought 6 tickets each and went for a ride on the "Big Dipper." I love wooden roller coasters! I love how you can't help but scream and giggle, there's no controlling the excitement, it just comes out.

After that we went and got some pizza at a brick oven place downtown. The pizza was awesome, and we figured we would work on our Karma and give the leftovers to a homeless guy outside. This Karma would come in handy later.

Pete had heard about a state park between Santa Cruz and San Francisco where you could camp on the beach, so we got in our cars and made our way towards that. We eventually found it, but discovered that it was full. It was already dark by this point and we were starting to worry about what we would do. We were stopped and discussing what the plan would be when this man came over and said that we may want to move, there had been a gang fight on the beach and there were a few police nearby who might think we were suspicious. We explained our predicament to him and he gave us directions to a place where we could illegally park our cars and, further, illegally camp on the beach. This seemed like the best plan so we set off to find this place. After not finding it, we stopped in at this British-themed pub and inn (complete with double-decker buses, old telephone booths and London cabs) to ask for directions or to see if they had any rooms available. They told us there were no rooms anywhere and that the road the guy told us to go down was closed at sunset. While waiting to get info, I tried to get one of those flattened penny souvenir things from a machine at the pub, the machine jammed and I lost my money and received no souvenir. At this point we figured the pizza Karma had completely backfired, it looked hopeless.

We figured the best plan would be to get down the road as far as we could, ditch the cars and walk for the beach, so off we went. Turned out the road wasn't closed at all, there were plenty of places to park, and there was beach access. We were still fairly paranoid that we would get in trouble from the cops if caught so we only took sleeping bags and pillows, tents would be too conspicuous. After climbing down a very sketchy path in the dark we found a lovely spot and had a wonderful sleep. Another adventure in the bag! Probably the most daring adventure of the trip so far. It's not every day one gets a chance to sleep on the beach in California.

Throngs of surfers on Cowell beach in Santa Cruz

Natural Bridges State Beach, near where we went for our ride