The Chief and I arrived on Friday and drove to Santa Cruz. We stayed at a Hampton Inn about 1.5 miles away from the beach. After checking in and hanging up our wedding clothes we walked down to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
My mom is from Santa Cruz and my grandparents lived there for many years. My mom, dad, brother, and I would go to visit for two weeks every summer. One of the highlights was going to the Boardwalk. It has not changed much, maybe a couple new attractions, some attractions were renamed and there are some different carnival games but it is still basically the same park. It had been nearly 20 years since I visited there and it brought back a lot of memories.
Some of the attractions have a prehistoric or cave man theme. One of the things I remember is the Sky Glider that takes people from one end of the park to the other. Most of the cars have people but there are a couple that look like this:
One problem is that the security is kind of antiquated:
One of the roller coasters has been in service since 1924. It is a wooden roller coaster called the Giant Dipper and it is still a good ride. We rode it twice. The first time we sat somewhere in the middle. The Chief wanted to go to the front. I new from experience that the front of the train was not as much fun. The second time we rode, we were in the very back car in the back seat. We got off the ride and the Chief said,
"It is better in the rear. You were right."She should listen to me more.
One other ride I remember is the carousel. I will call it an official "Assault on the Clown." There is a dispenser for rings and then the riders throw the rings towards a clown's mouth. When you hit the mouth a buzzer sounds. I remember the eyes lighting up too but that didn't happen during the time we were watching and taking pictures.
After using up our tickets, we walked over to the Santa Cruz Wharf for dinner. I don't remember going there as a kid but it was probably because it was overshadowed in my mind by the Boardwalk next door. There are restaurants on the wharf, of which we ate at two of during our visit. The seafood is very good and fresh.
Another interesting fact of the wharf is there are sea lions resting under the structure on the support cross beams. I guess they are acrobatic little suckers to get up that high on the beams...
We got to watch one of them crawl up the ladder to the top of the platform:
It climbed to the top. Growled/howled at the 6-8 people watching then jumped back into the water. We were standing too close. Even in the wind, man do they stink. We are fortunate that this did not happen.
Is this the sound it makes when you run over a half full plastic water bottle with the lawn mower?
The Boardwalk at night from the Wharf.
In the next post I'll share some of the pictures from the wedding.
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This has been on my mind lately.
Do you think that people that grow handlebar mustaches are secretly envious of the pinch beetle? Case in point I give you three examples:
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
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black and white mustache photos taken from: http://www.rokasdarulis.com/blog/moustache_club.
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