Thanksgiving Trip
2002-12-09 18:40:15+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments
Okay, backing off from
Hong Kong, for Thanksgiving week
Charlene and I went down to the Santa Cruz mountains to spend a couple
of days hanging out at Felton Crest Inn. What makes the inn isn't the
surrounding redwoods, the monstrously heavy comforter and mountains of
pillows (removed for this shot), the champagne and fresh fruit in the
room, or even the breakfast; it's that Hanna Peters, the owner and
proprietor, is so gracious. We had a wonderful three days hanging out
there, including a fun evening hanging out in her living room helping
her decorate her redwood Christmas tree clipped from beside her
driveway. For future reference, young redwoods are kinda scrawny and
spindly and don't make good Christmas trees, but we had fun.
On Friday we went
down to Santa Cruz, played for a little while on the boardwalk (and
I've gotta be frank here: Disney's California Adventure
is better),
and then ended up at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Laboratory
, up near
Natural Bridges State Park
(where only one bridge remains...). Had a
lot of fun, they've got some really good exhibits, a bunch of
interesting creatures, and a staff that really enjoys the
subject. Next time we'll sign up for the guided tour. And they've got
a skeleton of an 87
foot long whale outside that's an amazing sight.
On Saturday we headed out to Roaring
Camp Railroad where we rode behind one
of their two Shay locomotives. The Shay is an interesting beast
because it's a geared steam locomotive, with a side-mounted three
cylinder engine. A gorgeous example of 100 year old machinery. But it
also took a lot of skill to run, good engineers learned to play with
the throttle coming into curves to let the driveshafts slide, so that
they didn't jump the tracks when the trucks couldn't turn, and steel
on steel does not give great traction. It too three tries for them to
pull us up one particularly steep grade.
Friday night we ate at Ciao! Bella!!, a good italian
bistro, with a twist. When you read "ciao, bella" think of a
wolf-whistle; to "voulez vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?" overdriving
the sound system, the owner and waitresses swung off poles and ground
on stage in between courses. Fun, although they didn't quite connect
with their audience that night, it could have been a little more
compelling. Do not go unless you're comfortable with being mooned at
least once during your meal. Saturday day we had lunch at the Cowboy
Cafe in Felton, and were pleasantly surprised. Real greens, good
food. And that evening we at at the Tyrolean Inn, which was decent, although we both
thought Ciao! Bella!! had better food.
Thursday we went to the Winchester Mystery House, I'll give a separate accounting of that later.