I've Got Mail!

It will never cease to delight me to get an email from out of the blue from a reader of my blog. (Well, it might if that person is writing to tell me that my blog stinks and I have no business trying to write or take pictures but I've got my fingers crossed that won't happen!)  Last week I got not one but two emails from readers who had apparently stumbled upon my blog via web searches.

The first email came from Wayne who wrote to me regarding a post that I had written last June about my then-recent trip to Santa Cruz to visit blogging buddy Katherine and take in some of the California seacoast.  In my post, Santa Cruz - Day Two I had made mention that I was curious about the odd-shaped cement breakers that surrounded the Walton Lighthouse as they all seemed to be numbered and yet placed helter-skelter on the breakwater.

An anonymous commenter on that post had left me the information that "The pieces are numbered to assist the engineers in how they wear in the pounding of the surf and if they fail what was the composition and date and shift they were formed".  That sounded like a great explanation to me as previously neither I nor Katherine knew why they were numbered like they were and I'd had no luck with an internet search I'd done while trying to find the answer.

In his email, Wayne wrote,

"I saw your article about the Santa Cruz Harbor and you were curious about the “odd-shaped cement breakers”. I found this article about how and when they were built and wanted to share it with you. This file is over 18Mb so it could take a while to download, but it is worth it.

You can click on the link, “Building the Santa Cruz Harbor by George N. Wagner, Branch Manager (retired), Granite Construction Company” located at this web site, http://www.santacruzharbor.org/education/."

Wayne was right, it did take awhile for it download but the article explained not just about the tetrapods - the official name of those odd-shaped cement pieces - but also just how the Santa Cruz Harbor was constructed.  The article was written by Mr. Wagner in response to questions from his grandson, Abe, who asked, "Grandpa, how was this harbor built?   Where did the stone come from? Where did the jacks (tetrapods) come from? Did you build them?"  In order to answer those questions, Mr. Wagner wrote a 152-page article - complete with pictures - detailing the building of the Santa Cruz Harbor and even though it's pretty technical in places, it's a very interesting read.

Turns out that there are a total of 900 tetrapods, each weighing 28 tons, that were constructed at the rate of 40 a week.  In addition to the time it took to pour the giant cement jacks and for them to set, it then took another 24 to 25 days for the cement to cure before the tetrapods could be placed around the jetty.  It took 2-1/2 months to properly place them all and even though they look like they've been laid out pell-mell they were carefully placed to keep the ocean waves at bay.  To us it may look like a giant child just got tired of playing with her jacks and tossed them down near the edge of the water but there's definitely a reason for them being the way they are.

Thank you so much, Wayne, for sending me the link to that article; I truly appreciate it!  In addition, Wayne also sent me a link to a photo that he had taken of the tetrapods as he, too, found them interesting.  You can check his picture out at this link and if you've got a little time and want to see some other lovely photos of California, I urge you to browse through Wayne's photo gallery as he's got some beautiful stuff there!  Some of them make me yearn for another trip West to take some pictures of my own - especially those of the ghost-town Bodie, a place I've always wanted to go.  Maybe someday ...

Several days after getting Wayne's email, I received another email, this time from Bob who wrote:

"I've often visited Yantic Falls throughout the past 30 odd years. I understood a "Leaping" legend existed, but never quite got beyond my slack-jawed trance upon each visit following a particularly significant rainfall.  Wishing to get the legend straight in my mind, I happened upon your blog. WOW!  What a beautiful webpage! The images of the Falls are magnificent. Now I've got a link to send to my son away at college in VT.  He & I visited the Falls over his holiday break this month and were blown away yet again by the sheer force of the water, and majestic ice formations on the adjacent cliff. Thanks again for fleshing out this legend for me."

I'm going to guess that Bob was referring to my post The Legend of Chief Uncas and Indian Leap that I wrote in December of 2008 though I have written about and posted many pictures of the Indian Leap Falls area.  If you had something that looked like this practically in your backyard, I bet you'd go there a lot, too!

Unfortunately, the falls don't exactly look like they do in the picture above right now due to the fact that it's been colder than cold and there is obviously no foliage to be found unless it's of the brown & dead variety but you do have to admit, it still looks pretty in all of its frozen glory -

I like Bob's term of "majestic ice formations" so much better than mine of "very large pieces of frozen cauliflower" when it comes to describing the area around the falls in its winter splendor, don't you?

Thank you, Bob, for taking the time to send me an email and I am beyond delighted that I was able to tell you the story of Chief Uncas of the Mohegans and his leap across the chasm in his pursuit of rival Chief Miantonomo of the Narragansetts.  As someone who often finds herself wishing she had chosen to teach history rather than dispatch ambulances for a living, it means a lot to me to know that I told a story that someone wanted to learn.  I guess in some small way it sort of makes me a history teacher after all!

Santa Cruz - Day Two

At long last - one month to the day since I was there - I have finally managed to get the pictures of my second day in Santa Cruz into some sort of order and I can finally write the blog post I've wanted to write since I got back. There are lots of pictures so I put a good majority of them into collage form to save a little bit of space and scrolling on your part! Should you like to see a bigger version of any of the pictures, I believe that if you click on them you will be redirected to a larger size - or at least that's how it's supposed to work in theory! Because there are so many pictures, I'll try to keep the text short but you know me ... have fingers, will type!

Monday, May the 4th, dawned a little brighter in Santa Cruz than the Sunday before and it looked like California might at last be shedding the rain that had greeted me upon my arrival in Sacramento two days before. Even though the skies were still more gray than blue at least it didn't look like we were going to need an umbrella.

After rousting myself out of the extreme comfort of my bed at the very quaint Inn at Pasatiempo, located at the foot of the Santa Cruz mountains, I finally got my act together around mid-morning and drove down to meet Katherine at her home in Santa Cruz.

There were a couple places that I really wanted to see while in Santa Cruz and one of the first was the Santa Cruz Mission which is just one in the chain of 21 missions along California's El Camino Real ("The Royal Highway") from San Francisco to San Diego. The missions represent the first arrival of non-Native Americans to California and the Mission Santa Cruz was the 12th of the 21 to be built. Founded on August 28th, 1791 by Father Fermin Lasuen the mission was named for the sacred cross.

Unfortunately the Mission Santa Cruz had a rather turbulent history including the murder of one of its padres which in turn led to one of the very first autopsies to be performed in California. The original church was eventually destroyed by two earthquakes in 1840 and 1857. At the time of the mission's secularization in 1834, the complex contained 32 buildings; in the center of what was once that complex now stands Plaza Park. In 1931 a small replica of the original mission church, whose bell is pictured above, was built near the original site.

In 1889, on the site where Santa Cruz Mission once stood, the town built the Holy Cross Catholic Church for their use. The beautiful granite arch in front of the church was erected to commemorate the 100th birthday of Mission Santa Cruz in 1891.

Following our visit to Mission Santa Cruz and the Holy Cross Church, Katherine and I drove down towards the water and the Santa Cruz boardwalk - a place I had been to only once before when I lived in California.

There were a couple of things I remembered from that previous trip: one was the frozen chocolate-covered bananas (yum!) and the other was the Giant Dipper, Santa Cruz's wooden rollercoaster that has been making people of all ages scream for the past 85 years. Luckily for us, the boardwalk was partially open with a few of the rides running - one of them being the Giant Dipper itself.

Katherine asked if I was up for a ride and after debating the pros and cons of going on a rollercoaster with a back that could conceivably go out if I coughed wrong I decided to throw caution to the wind and climb on for a trip around the tracks. As you can see, there was no need to wait in line which made the ride that much more enjoyable. Katherine and I took our seats in the back (you get better air-time in the back!) and the ride was just as much fun as I remembered it to be from all those years ago. There's just something about the smell of a wooden rollercoaster that makes it that much more thrilling and as we flew over the hills and dips, my back didn't hurt a bit and I was glad I had taken the chance and gone for the ride.

Further down the boardwalk is a candy shoppe that would have had any kid - or adult for that matter! - drooling over the display of confectionery goodies. While we were there I could have gotten one of those frozen chocolate-covered bananas that I remembered so well but for some unknown reason I didn't. Maybe I figure it gives me a good reason to go back sometime!

After we had walked the length of the boardwalk and enjoyed our rollercoaster ride, Katherine then took me over to the Santa Cruz Pier - which you could walk to from the boardwalk if one was feeling adventurous ... we weren't!

There are a number of shops and restaurants located out on the pier and whereas the boardwalk offered sweets, the pier offered up a different sort of delicacy - fresh seafood!

I'm sure the guy behind the counter thought I was nuts as I took pictures of fish on beds of ice but I thought it all looked pretty cool even if I'm not much of a seafood eater.

The pier also gave me a chance to photograph some of the native wildlife including large starfish that wrapped themselves around the pilings beneath the pier and a few of the many sea lions that climbed up on the boards below the pier to take naps or snarl at curious photographers! Katherine assured me that they were less than friendly creatures as she flapped her arms together like fins and did a pretty good imitation of a sea lion bark! That may have been about the time the guy in the picture above gave me the evil eye!

Another person walking along the pier with friends offered to take a picture of Katherine and I together so we said sure. After all, we were both probably feeling pretty comfortable hiding behind our sunglasses - at least I know that I was! Besides, in this shot you can see what a lovely looking lady Katherine truly is. Only problem is, you can't see how very nice she is on the inside!

Even though it was still somewhat hazy, I really like all of these pictures that I took of the water off of the Santa Cruz beach. Those things that look like mountains in the background are actually the hills of Monterey on the other side of the bay. The California coastline makes a lot of twisty turns and that's one of them right there. For some reason I always seem to forget that Santa Cruz is actually north of Monterey but that could be because I'm a little rusty on my California geography. Katherine, who is a pilot, tells me when I come back out to visit that she'll take me on a flight in a small plane up the coastline which is a great incentive to go back again as I can only imagine how cool that would be!

After one more picture of Steamer Lane from the pier, we climbed back into the car and drove over to the marina where we could walk out to the other of Santa Cruz's lighthouses - the Walton Lighthouse or Santa Cruz Harbor Light as it's alternately known.

This relatively new lighthouse which was built in 2001 was dedicated on June 9th, 2002 and named in honor of Derek Walton, brother of Charles Watson of Los Gatos who gave a major donation when fundraising was going on for the new harbor light. Derek, who had passed away, was a former merchant marine and no doubt would have been delighted (no pun intended) to have a lighthouse named in his honor.

A plaque on the door of the lighthouse reads "for the people and mariners of Santa Cruz". Through the door sits a circular staircase of 42 steps at the top of which is a fifth order Fresnel lens that flashes a green light every four seconds 54 feet above sea level. Unfortunately you can't climb the tower but have to be content to walk around the breakwater on which the lighthouse sits. Speaking of the breakwater ...

I found the odd shaped cement breakers rather fascinating as each one seemed to have a number on it (though not all could lame claim to having graffiti - thank goodness!). I asked Katherine if she knew why they were numbered but she wasn't really sure and I haven't been at all successful in finding out why via an internet search. Anyone know or want to hazard a guess?

Oh, and while I'm asking things ...

... does anyone know what kind of bird this is? Katherine and I saw a lot of them - an awful lot of them! - not only in Santa Cruz near the harbor but near the old cement World War I supply ship the Palo Alto in Aptos. As a matter of fact, it seemed like a lot of them had made the Palo Alto their home. They were kind of odd looking, to say the least!

Before we hit the highway to make our way back over to Stockton for our dinner with Sandee and Zane we made a few other stops in Santa Cruz but there is still a lot there I'd like to see one of these days - including maybe a gorgeous sunset or two that the weather deprived me of this last time! Not that I'm complaining as the whole trip really was wonderful and I am so glad that I made the drive over the Santa Cruz mountains in less-than-ideal California weather to spend a few days exploring Katherine's lovely community. I've often said that if I could live anywhere I'd pick Lake Tahoe but I'm beginning to think I need to make that Tahoe in the summer and Santa Cruz in the winter. What a great place that I now have some great memories of!

Thank you again, Katherine, for being my tour guide and chauffeur - I enjoyed every single minute of it and really do hope to get back out there someday soon! After all I need to get one of those frozen chocolate-covered bananas, take an airplane ride, eat at the Shadowbrook and go on that neat looking tram, take some pictures of the sunset, ride on the Giant Dipper again, ... !!

My Three Anniversaries on the Third

Today I mark three anniversaries: it was thirty-three years ago today that I graduated from Windham High School in Willimantic, Connecticut and began my ascent into adulthood (snicker), it is my six-year anniversary as an Emergency Medical Dispatcher with American Ambulance (yay!), and also the one-month anniversary of my time in Santa Cruz with Katherine, an amazing woman who lives in an amazing place. Guess which one I have a few pictures of?

No, no - that's not Santa Cruz in that picture above, that would be Aptos (I think) which is south of Santa Cruz (Katherine please correct me if I'm wrong!). On my first day in Santa Cruz, Sunday the 3rd, we took a drive along the coast and this was one of the places we saw. It was pretty foggy as it had been raining in California for an unprecedented number of days in honor of my arrival but it added a rather interesting, almost Hitchcock-esque feel to the area.

This is part of the infamous Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz where surfers wait patiently to catch a wave and sea lions bark loudly in the fog like flippered foghorns warning of the rocks ahead.

In spite of the chill and the fog and the encroaching darkness, men dressed as seals in black rubber wetsuits wait for the ocean swells that will take them on a ride across the cold waters.

Even in the fog, though, Santa Cruz has much to offer - especially when you've got an ace tour guide to lead the way! Come on back tomorrow and I'll take you on Day Two of my trip to the California Coast - one month to the day! Don't you love anniversaries??

Caption That Photo!

Today, like yesterday, has a lot of running around for various and assorted errands scheduled so I'm afraid I'm not going to have a lot of time for blogging until perhaps later this evening when I settle down in front of the TV and watch "American Idol". Being the professional multi-tasker that I am, I can watch Adam perform and blog at the same time!

In the meantime, though, I thought I'd use one of my pictures that I took out in California last week and see if you maybe ya'll could come up with a caption or two for it. I took this picture at the Seacliff Beach Pier in Aptos where the Palto Alto is located and felt that it looked like these two birds were talking to each other. That, in turn, led me to think that perhaps some of you comedians out there might have some fun with it

I'll be back later to see what you came up with but for now I've got an appointment with the eye doctor, lunch with an old friend, and a consult with Amanda's oral surgeon lined up. Hope you all have a great Tuesday no matter what you're doing!

Una cena excelente con el buen alimento y mejores amigos!

As most of you who read my blog on a regular basis know, I used to live in California quite a few years ago and I still have former in-laws that I keep in touch with as well as friends from that period of time in my life. They serve as a very good incentive to occasionally (very occasionally) make the rather long trip back out this way.

Another incentive is the Mexican food. I know I sound like a broken record but honest-to-God folks, you just cannot get good Mexican food in Connecticut - at least in my own humble opinion! For that reason, whenever I am out this way I have to make at least one - if not several - trips to my very favorite Mexican place - Cancun in downtown Stockton. It may not be the best in town by some people's standards but it was a favorite when I worked at the police department and it continues to be a favorite to this day. What can I say? I am a creature of habit!

After spending the day traipsing around Santa Cruz with Katherine and having a fabulous time (a post will follow on that as soon as I have more time), she and I came back over to Stockton and met up with Sandee and her husband Zane at my favorite Mexican restaurant and had a fantastic time. As a matter of fact, we ended up closing the place down as the time just flew by!

In addition to consuming that absolutely fantastic strawberry margarita that you see pictured above, I also broke from tradition and rather than ordering my usual #13, I opted for the Combinación del número seises and it was, of course, ¡Muy bueno! Honestly, if I could pack one of the cooks at Cancun into my suitcase and take him/her home with me, I would! Of course, then I'd be able to have Mexican food all the time and would have one less reason to come visit California ... hmm ...

Actually, I have come to the conclusion that I have many more reasons to come visit California again as Katherine has promised me a plane ride up the coast, dinner at Shadowbrook (a very cool restaurant in Santa Cruz that you have to take a gondola down the hill to get to), and other assorted attractions plus it would give me the opportunity to see Sandee and Zane again who are just absolutely fantastic people (even though Zane is kind of like Teller in the Penn & Teller magician act as he doesn't speak much - if at all!).

Now I know you're probably wondering why there aren't any pictures of all of us at dinner last night and the reason is that Zane was the official photographer and you'll just have to wait until I get copies from Sandee. I was too busy sucking down that drink and diving into my food to even worry about anything but an obligatory quick picture before I ate it all!

Speaking of food, I need to get my shoes on and get out of here so that I can meet another old friend for lunch this afternoon. Scott is a sports writer for the local paper, the Stockton Record, and we want to get together before he has to head into work this afternoon.

Katherine - again - thank you for a wonderful time in Santa Cruz, I enjoyed every minute of it and am so glad the weather decided to be nice! Sandee and Zane - thank you again for dinner and for making the trip over to Stockton to see me, it was great to see the both of you again! I guess I'll have to start thinking about that "next time" now!

"The best laid plans of mice and men ..."

... sometimes get rained on or changed at the last moment. So far, my trip to California seems to have been one changed plan after another that gets rained on but that doesn't mean it's been bad - just not what I thought.

I don't know how many times I heard on the news this morning that normally California only gets three total rainy days for the entire month but so far, it has rained every single day of May and apparently there is more in store for the next couple of days. Oh yay, oh yay - do I have good timing or what??

In addition to the rain which has kind of messed things up, Cyndi and I had to change plans for our trip to Santa Cruz when her husband came down with a nasty case of the flu (his doctor doesn't think it's swine flu or the H1N1 virus but it's the flu nonetheless) and Cyndi needed to stay home to take care of him. It's kind of hard to do anything for yourself when your bones feel like melted jello so I fully understood why she needed to bail out on me. Still, it was a disappointment for her to miss out on the trip but the hotel room had been booked and paid for, Katherine was waiting, and I've driven to New York City by myself so Santa Cruz had to be a piece of cake in spite of the crappy weather and traffic, right? Hence I made the trip across the Santa Cruz mountains on my own and checked into the Inn at Pasatiempo which is a charming little place nestled at the bottom of the mountains.

I'm no expert when it comes to flowers - that would have been Cyndi's department - but there are quite a few fragrant blossoms outside of my door that are lovely to look at and really add to the beauty of this place. I'm sorry Cyndi had to miss it - she would have really liked it.

After dropping my bags in my room, I climbed back into the car and made my way down to Santa Cruz proper to meet up with Katherine, authoress of Wading Through My Stream of Consciousness. I originally met Katherine during last year's visit when we got together for dinner at Cancun in Stockton along with Sandee and Zane and Katherine's guy, The Teamster and she is a great person who takes great pictures and lives in a great town.

Thankfully it had stopped raining and even though it was still overcast as well as foggy and misty, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour that Katherine gave me of what is apparently Surf Central here in the United States! Honestly, I'm not sure I've ever seen so many surfers in one place just out bobbing around in the ocean waiting for a wave to come along that they can catch a ride on. I never knew surfers' had to be so patient but apparently they are and they also have their own rules of etiquette and proper surfer behavior. From what Katherine was telling me, it's probably not a good idea to tick a surfer off when it comes to taking your turn out of order with a wave, the consequences could be more than you bargained for!

After dinner at Katherine's favorite Mexican place (as delicious as any Mexican food I remember!), we drove around some more and Katherine showed me a rather unusual site -

This is the Palo Alto, a World War I supply ship that was made from cement and rebar when steel was in short supply. Formerly docked at the Seacliff Beach Pier as a casino and dance hall until its owners went bust during the Great Depression., it's currently home to an awful lot of birds! Katherine also tells me that it's like a manmade tidal pool in that there are all sorts of marine life living below it's submerged decks.

Following our short walk on the short pier, we drove back towards Santa Cruz itself to another popular surfing locale, Steamer Lane, which was really covered in mist and fog but where many more surfers were out waiting to catch the next curl. Also located here is the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum which is housed in the Mark Abbot Memorial Lighthouse.

Being the curious sort, I did a little bit of research and found out the following about this little lighthouse -

On February 28, 1965, Mark Abbott, age 18, drowned while bodysurfing in the waters near Pleasure Point, three miles east of Point Santa Cruz. Mark’s parents, Chuck and Esther Abbott, had purchased a life insurance policy for their son’s 18th birthday, and shortly after the accident they received a $20,000 payment. Remembering that Mark had enjoyed the lighthouses seen during their family vacation along the Oregon coast, the Abbotts decided to use the insurance money to donate a lighthouse to the city in honor of their son. Five years earlier, the city had purchased all of the lighthouse property except for the area immediately around the still active wooden Coast Guard tower. In 1967, the brick Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse was built adjacent to the wooden tower that it would replace. The lantern room from the decommissioned Oakland Harbor Lighthouse was used atop the new lighthouse, and Mark’s ashes were buried at the base of the tower. (Badly corroded, the lantern room was replaced in 1996.)

Katherine tells me the surfing museum is suffering from the same financial difficulties that is affecting so many other places in this country and is currently closed pending the ability of the Santa Cruz Surfing Club Preservation Society to keep it open. In the meantime, though, it still looks pretty cool in the mist and fog!

With any luck, that mist and fog won't make a reappearance today and I'll be able to actually see the ocean when Katherine and I continue our tour of the area. I believe that the Santa Cruz mission and another lighthouse are on the agenda along with the boardwalk and maybe even a train trestle before we make our way back towards Stockton and dinner with Sandee and Zane at my very favorite Mexican restaurant. Let's see how these plans go, shall we?!?