Santa Cruz

After Winchester Mystery house, we drove to Santa Cruz.  

When we first started planning the trip, we picked up a bunch of books about California, and I had the girls each make a list of places they wanted to go.  

Dinner on the pier, which Katie kept calling a Pierre.  We had fish & chips.  

Then we went down to the beach to touch the ocean.  

I tried to plan out our trip so that we wouldn't be in the car for more than 3, 3 1/2 hours at a stretch.  

Fortunately, there's interesting things to see & do everywhere, so that wasn't a problem.

It's been a good long while since my toes were in the ocean.  I'm thinking 2019, when I was in North Carolina.  

Of course I saw the ocean last summer, on the cruise ship, but it's not quite the same.

The portions at the restaurant were generous, so we had to go boxes with us.  I flung a fry or two to a seagull, and you can imagine how that ended.  We had a dozen or so come and beg.  One of them even tried to fly off with Hannah's dinner box.