Santa Cruz

Laziness, a sense of finally being back home, and a touch of travel fatigue are the best explanations for why it's been so long since I added a new post to this blog.

As I mentioned before, there were no reservations available in RV parks around here for the days surrounding Thanksgiving.  Our friends Jen and Sammy found a very generous neighbor of theirs in Scotts Valley with a large graveled area just behind his home, and we parked the motorhome there and moved into the home of Linda Lord, who is on a scuba diving vacation in Mexico and offered to let us plop down there with Sophia and Tammy Faye while she's gone.

We drove down to the Santa Cruz Garden Mall and walked along what we've decided is one of the coolest shopping neighborhoods in the country.  It was kind of exciting to walk into the Santa Cruz bookstore, which was there before we came to town lo those many years ago.

If you look closely you'll see a street musician next to that iconic sculpture of a famous saw player outside the bookshop.  That guy wasn't great but a couple of other street performers that day were first class.

It still saddens us to observe that the Cooper House, a lovely, massive, and distinctive brick building, is no longer there.  Damaged in the 1989 earthquake, it was torn down - unnecessarily, I suspect - and replaced with a conventional commercial building.  Progress, you know.  Before that, a very good jazz band - called "Warm", I believe - played almost daily in the front patio of the Cooper House surrounded by an outdoor lunch crowd and the street passersby.  Santa Cruz was even more magical in those days.

I took this back-home opportunity to make various dental and medical visits among providers I know.  Those important maintenance checkups are not so easy when you're traveling in unfamiliar lands, which has been our situation for the past year.

I had a nasty episode of high fevers, chills, and body aches which necessitated a bit of medical workup but seems to have been one of those many unnamed viral illnesses - not the flu - lurking about.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Mark and Nancy Wainer, bought a car, and have a number of dinners and get-togethers with friends scheduled for the coming weeks.  We'll be moving back to Smithwoods RV Park in Felton in a couple of days, and then on December 9 will drive to one of our favorite campgrounds, in one of our favorite areas - Napa Valley - for a wild week of wine and food.