My friend and I had a nice time the day we went to Santa Cruz, California. We saw a lot of beautiful scenery. Along the way, I saw a sign that said the scenic route was coming up. I told him that I thought we had already been doing a scenic route. We drove through some redwood forests, but they were young trees. Probably only 4 or 5 hundred years old, but still very tall and impressive.

He took me to his favorite beach at Davenport. I gave it 5 stars. Some sand, cliffs, dramatic rocks, and crashing waves. Pretty secluded and private, except for the 40-50 seagulls that were huddled together having some sort of meeting on the beach.

We had lunch at a place called the Moss Beach Distillery. It was a popular and successful speakeasy during prohibition. Ships would come down from Canada with booze and it would be smuggled up the cliffs and into waiting vehicles. There were other speakeasies in the area, but this one…Frank’s…was the only one to never get busted. Movie stars and such were frequent customers.

It also has a resident ghost called The Blue Lady. She was a beautiful lady that always wore blue.  She fell in love with a Handsome Dangerous Man (sigh) and was killed in a car accident.  She roams the beach there and the restaurant looking for her lover. She and the place were featured on Unsolved Mysteries.   

I didn’t see her, but while we were eating I did see a ship that my friend said was a fog bank. I also saw a possible “something” like a whale or sea lions swimming in the ocean that turned out to be rocks that weren’t swimming anywhere. I did finally see an actual sea lion, but he was skeptical of me for some reason and didn’t believe me.

We finished up at Santa Cruz and the Boardwalk which is an amusement park. He was more amused than I. I won a frog with a gold crown and a purple cape and he’s carrying a heart that says “Kiss Me”. I won it by catapulting rubber chickens into big pots. That was the fun part.

Then, slipping into temporary insanity, I agreed to ride on the Ferris wheel. I swore off Ferris wheels many, many years ago. We were 1/4 of the way up when I snapped out of whatever spell he has on me, and I told him we should get off. He said we couldn’t, it was too late. I said, no, it wasn’t too late; we just had to scream loudly and seriously enough at the guy to let us off.  I knew what I was talking about.  I have experience in such matters.  I held off from screaming for a bit and said I would try to stick it out.