Destination: California

After 18 hours and 1,200 miles, we arrived at Morgan's house in Santa Cruz, California at 3am and promptly went to sleep! We drove through the Mojave desert which usually gets less that 10 inches of rain a year. The day we drove through, the desert got three inches in one day. We passed the Pertified forest national park. We were a little behind schedule, but we really wanted to see the pertified wood so we compromised and stopped in the visitors centre.

As for California, I'm a little stuck for words here (fancy that...) as it is challenging to capture such an incredible ten days in words. Let me start by saying that we were only going to stay seven days...















Hannah keeping the beach safe!














Winter in Santa Cruz - tough!

Santa Cruz, the birth place of surfing, was to be our home in California. We stayed with Morgan, who lives in the home that Summer built, along with Phoenix and Jessie. Summer bought the house 6 years ago and has transformed it and the garden into something quite fantastic! It is colourful, light, and interesting, kinda like Summer actually...;-)















Hannah, Summer, Morgan and me















The house that Summer built!


Morgan and Summer have also transformed the back garden from a concrete slab into a wonderful garden that produces the most amazing fruits and vegetables! Over 90% of the US's produce is grown in the California. Okay, that might be 90% of US artichokes are grown in California, but just trust me, stuff grows in California.















The farmers market!















Any guesses as to what this is?

The first night that we were in Santa Cruz was Thanksgiving. Morgan is a trained macrobiotic chef and is busy studying to be a nutritional educator. Thus our incredible non-traditional, vegetarian meal was cooked by our own personal chef!

















Thanksgiving!

The weather was beautiful every day. In fact it was basically the same everyday: low 70's (24'C). We cycled along the beachfront and boardwalk watching the narly surfers catching big waves. We also played disc golf at the famous De Laveaga course. We met up with a volunteer of Hannah's in South Africa, Jason, who lives in San Francisco. We drove to San Francisco to visit him along the famed Route 1.


























Route 1!


We drove over the Golden Gate bridge and went hiking on Mount Tam
which overlooks the sea and, on a clear day, all the way back to San Francisco itself. There was a huge storm in Alaska at that time so there were huge swells sweeping down the coast, much to the surfers delight. We could see the swell so clearly from the top of Mt. Tam. After our hike, we drove into San Francisco to have supper, except we couldn't decide between Indian/Pakistani and Thai so we decided to go to both. Indian for starters and a few shops down for Thai for our main course. If you haven't done it, I highly recommend it.

































Hiking on Mount Tam!

One of the highlights of our stay in Santa Cruz, was visiting Nina and Sibley who are good friends of a good friend of ours, Will (phew!). Will put us in contact and we went to go and visit them on the small holding literally ten minutes from Morgan's house.















One of the yurts on the property!















View from Nina and Sibley's cabin

This amazing property was once a hippy commune and is nestled in a valley between two mountain ridges. There are eight houses / cabins / structures on the property and they are all run off the grid. We arrived mid afternoon and walked up on the ridge which overlooks the sea! On the ridge, in a stand of pines and bluegums are two redwood trees that stand 110 feet tall (35m). Nina and Sibley, on one of their eight wedding days (that is a story for another day), enlisted the help of their guests (Will included) to build a platform in the redwoods, 79 feet up. We decided to climb up to watch the sunset. The branches of the redwood radiate out from the trunk which makes it an easy tree to climb...well...easier than most. I'm not the biggest fan of heights but I'm proud to say that I followed Hannah, Sibley, and Morgan up the tree and got the most beautiful sunset as a reward! Thankfully going down was much easier than going up!















Morgan taking a rest during her climb.















The view from the top!

We extended our stay as long as we could, but eventually we had to leave.
But don't cry for us, California! The truth is, we've never left you!

We'll be back!