We arrived in Felton, just north of Santa Cruz, on Wednesday the 19th and have been here for a week at the fabulous Cotillion Gardens campground under the majestic Redwood trees. The park is surrounded by Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, also heavily forested with Redwoods. It has been Redwood time around here! You can read about my inner experience in Lessons from the Redwoods on my website.
While here, we have explored Santa Cruz and found the best burritos we’ve had since leaving North Carolina (found at Tacos Moreno, where you will find a line out the door every day). We’ve driven up the most gorgeous Pacific coastline north of Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay, watching the windsurfers battle it out with the waves at Scotts Creek Beach (apparently a nude beach, but there weren’t any nudies when we went there!), and we have walked among the Mother and Father trees in Big Basin State park, a true wonder to behold.
The town of Felton is fairly small, population about 6500, but it has a lot going on, and as we have found in California, towns are smacked up right next to one another, rather than having lots of space between them. So if you don’t find what you need in one town, you drive 5 minutes and you will find it in the next town! Felton has a sweet main street with a few cool shops and restaurants, and the people are super friendly. Many here, once hearing what our family is up to, have insisted that we move here to the Santa Cruz area. Well, who knows? Nothing is a done deal at this point…the mystery of how we will pull off buying property in California has not been revealed to us yet. But it is safe to say that all four of us are still yearning to get back south to San Luis Obispo. IN the mean time, we have enjoyed the magic of this area very much….we’ll be back!
We are headed south to Monterey for the Thanksgiving holiday to be with Peter’s family again, then we will go back to San Luis to spend some quality time getting to know the area and the people there….it felt so right while we were there, and now we are going to test those feelings and see what we come up with. We can’t wait.
