Home Again Indeed: Road Trip Day 6 &7

SANTA CRUZ (Aptos)

We came to Santa Cruz to meet up with Susan, my friend from Cleveland State days, who was living in an leaving Aptos. This region carries memories for Paul and me from our first visit there in 1987 when I had an NEH seminar grant to study literary translation at UC-Santa Cruz, the only place we ever lived where we watched deer on the lawn while we listened to seals on the beach. We'd made that trip in Paul's very old, un-air-conditioned, rusting out Bobcat station wagon. It was a hard drive-- a holiday weekend-- but what a difference to cruise into town in an air-conditioned car with fuel injection.

We stayed at the Mariott, which was the most careful about covid place so far at a price over twice what we had paid, much more welcoming that the Microtel and fewer bugs. Then we had a very healthy beautiful salad at a nearby brewery, and went to bed. 

And the next day, we joined Susan to visit her Aptos, where she and her husband Buzz lived together till he died a few years ago. She took us on a tour of the benches she had placed in his memory. You can't see it, but the first bench reads, "Aloha, Buzz," a shoutout to their previous life in Hawaii. 

We toured the National Park and talked to the Rangers and got a lesson about the S.S. Palo Alto, the concrete shipped docked there. 

Then Susan led us in a walk through the Forest of Nisene Marks, about which Paul has written: 

"Although almost all of the redwoods in Nisene Marks were clearcut by 1923, the forest is healing itself. New redwoods often grow from the roots of downed trees, forming 'fairy rings." The photo below shows a fairy ring that contains multiple generations of redwoods."

After our seaside and forest walk, we headed back to zany Santa Cruz to one of our favorite bookstores, Bookshop Santa Cruz. We did not visit the even zanier boardwalk this time.