A circular drive

Today we went for a nice drive, courtesy of Nathan's boss. We showed a potential new hire and his girlfriend around a bit of Santa Cruz and then up the coast and across through the redwoods in the coastal range. (I am pleased to report that we didn't actually drive through any trees, just past them.)

We had lunch by the marina, where it was grey when we first sat down



and then brightened up by the time we had finished:



The heiferweizen was a little shaken up it seems - someone had problems pouring it without a huge head.


We walked up almost to the mouth of the river (you can see the dredger and its pipeline in the pic above) to admire the Pacific and the lighthouse.




The breakwater/groin that the lighthouse sits on is made up of concrete "shapes" which totally fascinated me. Obviously the local sandstoney type rock is not impervious enough to the pounding of the waves. (see natural bridges below)

We then found Cliff Road after doing a little tour of the boardwalk area (no pics) and drove up to Natural Bridges. Looking south from the carpark, we saw


BLUE!

And looking north?


GREY! (note there is only one bridge left - I guess the same fate befell the second arch to the mainland as befell our London Bridge in Victoria.)

Which direction were we going in? Guess? Guess why there are no pics of the coastline or of the wildflowers (native and weedy) along the coastline? So we drove up to Pescadero, with brief views of a cloudy and veiled Pacific Ocean on our left, no kite surfers, past rudey nudey Bonny Doon Beach.... Interestingly it was a little clearer up in the mountains! So we stopped on Alpine Road for a little walk through the redwoods.




These are only bubby coastal redwoods - nothing like the ones we saw at Muir Woods and not to be confused with the giant sequoias that live say at Yosemite.



Quite a number of plants are in flower at present in the redwoods or are about to be in flower.

Redwood sorrel, or Oxalis oregana, or Oregon sorrel. The flowers were not very open.



Cardamine californica or milkmaids (different to our milkmaids at home!). The one in the pic below has pointy leaves - I presume it is the same plant as it has the same flower structure.


After a long afternoon of looking, gawping, knitting (for me) and blathering (oops, me again), we hopped across to the Sonoma Chicken Coop for dinner with knitty/crochetty friends and home with a magnificent sunset at our backs.