Santa Cruz

Today marks three weeks on the road. We left Pinnacles a week ago and traveled to Santa Cruz, where we stayed for five days at New Brighton State Beach. Again, we were more than a bit shocked at the camping fees: $35 per night for a site with no hookups. We started to consider the possibility that we will have to return home sooner than we planned, but for now we’re still heading south and planning to be out for at least two months. I’m still thinking four months, but I’m happy just to be traveling and still moving south.

On the way to Santa Cruz we stopped in San Juan Bautista, less than an hour away but a town I never visited when I lived here. It’s a nice enough tourist town, the likes of which we expect to see lots of on this trip, but what makes it special is the Spanish mission, which dates back to the late seventeen hundreds and which has been in continuous use since then. We were lucky to visit on a Sunday because mass was in session and I was able to stand in the open doorway and listen for awhile. The service was in Spanish and I could follow it fairly well, and the church is magnificent. I was reminded how long the Spanish and then Mexicans owned this land and all of the Southwest until we stole it from them in the Mexican-American War of the mid-1800s. That culture has lived on uninterrupted here for over three-hundred years, and it reminded me once again of the foolishness of much of the anti-immigration rhetoric.

Also, there were lots of chickens, magnificent roosters which wander loose on the streets, just as we saw in Kauai when we visited there last summer.

We wanted to stay at New Brighton for a few days before going on to stay with our friends Sue and Marty so we could visit old haunts on our own without putting them out too much as guests. In fact we went into town only once to do laundry and catch up on email and such in a coffee shop/internet café. We did drive by the old house on 14th
Avenue where I lived for four years in the early 70s and where Mary and I lived together for a couple of years before we made the permanent move north in 1975. The house, amazingly, is still standing and occupied, a one-room cinder block ugly little thing that I still love. This in the middle of a now mostly upscale neighborhood where by all expectations the house should have been torn down to make way for a new expensive home or condos.

I always have mixed feelings coming back to Santa Cruz. Much as I love it, the years I spent here were hard in many ways, especially when I graduated and had a hard time finding a decent job. The future looked bleak for a couple of years, with me working first for minimum wage in a deli in Watsonville and then as an area manager for 7-Eleven stores, by far the worst job I ever had. Although I did a good job for them, I never fit into the Slurpy culture and was finally fired. I still feel the shock of that, but it led to our decision to move away and all the good things and lucky breaks that followed for the rest of our years up to now.

Still, I’m drawn to Santa Cruz for its amazingly beautiful scenery, its artistic and intellectual culture, and its total hipness. If a modest little home could be had for less than half a million bucks, I think we’d probably move back, but as it is we have to be content just to visit. I get back mostly every year when I come down for the motorcycle races at Laguna Seca, but it’s been about fifteen years since Mary was last here.

And here it is 2010, and I’m just amazed at how time flies, or seems to have flown when I look back.

After a cool, rainy spell at New Brighton, the weather has taken a turn towards spring, with temperatures in the 70s and sunny skies. It’s always wonderful to visit Sue and Marty. Sue, Mary and I all met here now nearly forty years ago, and Sue and Marty are the only friends left who have managed to stay in Santa Cruz with its astronomical home prices and scarce employment. Marty has mostly stayed employed in the computer industry, though now he has to make the dangerous commute to San Jose every day. Sue is an artist of growing reputation.

We’ll spend a few more days here (free camping in their driveway!) and make at least one visit to Mary’s brothers in San Jose. Then we plan to head south again for a hundred miles or so and stay at Corrizo National Monument. We’re both still very happy to be on the road and are taking our time getting down to southern Arizona, which is as far as we plan to travel.