Tourist Visit to Santa Cruz

On Wednesday, we decided to be tourists in Santa Cruz. We began by driving out to the Santa Cruz Wharf. The skies were overcast, however it was nice because it kept the temperature down. It has been really hot in Santa Cruz the last few days. We bought some mocha's and wandered around the wharf. The views were still quite impressive. We looked at the some sea lions and some of the other wild animals (including tourists).





We decided to head over to the boardwalk. As we were walking along the wharf, this guy hooks onto a fish. He shouts to his buddies, "Hey, I got a huge fish on the line. It must be 15 pounds, come look!" We wander on a bit. A minute later he yells to his friends, "Guys, I got a really big fish on the line, it is over 10 pounds!" We stop to watch him struggle with his fish. A few minutes later, he shouts "C'mon guys, I got a 10 pounder. Take a look!" Finally one of his friends wanders over. The fisherman plays a little bit longer with the fish and finally lands it. As he is walking back with it, Barbara asks him, "Do you really think it is 10 pounds?" He sheepishly replies that he overestimated it, but it must be 6 or 7 pounds. I seriously doubt that it is more than 2 or 3 pounds. But it was fun to see his excitement over the fish.


We continued on to the boardwalk. We decide to play a game of miniature golf. It was alot of fun. When we were first dating in Santa Barbara, we used to go play miniature golf. In fact, Barbara will tell you the first time she realized that she was in love with me was on a miniature golf course. Anyway, miniature golf has some great memories for us and we enjoyed the game. Amazingly enough our scores were exact ties! (There may have been some creative scorekeeping done.)



No matter how often we go, we are always impressed by the golf course at the boardwalk. They have done an elaborate job on the course and the surroundings. It has been open over 10 years or so and they have done an excellent job of maintaining the course. We have noticed that they updated and changed some of the holes in the last year or so. Too often, we have played other courses that were really nice when built, but become neglected over the years.




After we finished our golf game, we wandered down the boardwalk. We stopped at some tourist shops and watched some of the rides and just generally people-watched. Barbara decided that she wanted a souvenir from our vacation to Santa Cruz, so she bought a sweatshirt. We slowly sauntered back to the wharf. We watched people walking towards the boardwalk, playing volleyball, dining at the Ideal Bar, families fishing off of the wharf. It turned out to be a very pleasant day playing tourists in Santa Cruz. And we were never more than 2 miles from our house!



More of my vacation photos can be found here.