Mysterious Santa Cruz

This past weekend we headed for the hills of Santa Cruz to fulfill one of Damien's must-dos for this summer. The Santa Cruz Mystery Spot is obviously located in Santa Cruz and is touted to be one of the most unexplainable phenomenons of the region. For example, once you are on the Mystery Spot (which is located deep in the Santa Cruz mountains) you immediately feel dizzy and a bit disoriented. If you bring a compass to the spot, it will flip 180 degrees for no reason. Things are level, but you cannot stand up straight, instead- you lean drastically to one side. We had to see it to believe it, so we loaded the kids in the car for the adventure. All three kids fell asleep as we reached our exit off of the highway. I noticed that we were weaving and turning down a crazy winding road and asked Damien what was going on! He told me that he had decided to take the 'scenic route' down the mountain. "Isn't it beautiful? It is so beautiful" he kept saying. He rolled down his window and began taing deep breaths of the aromatic air. I was sitting in the backseat and began to feel a little queasy. "Are we almost there?" I asked. He told me that we had 6 more miles of winding to do! I was jokingly complaining that this was crazy and I said that we better have a full tank of gas so we don't get lost in the woods! He was silent. "Damien, tell me we have gas!" He pushed one of the nifty technological buttons in our car which told us we only had 7 miles of gas left. Are you kidding me? I demanded that he pull over and GPS where the nearest gas station was. Here we were, in the middle of the mountains, with only 7 miles of gas left! It turned out that the gas station was 8 miles away. I wanted to die. Luckily, we arrived on fumes at a gas station. My prayers had been answered. I had to take a picture of our gauge for proof! Damien looks relieved, doesn't he!

The kids loved the Mystery Spot and thought it was so cool. Damien and I both felt sick afterwards. It was if we had ridden on a roller coaster for hours on end. Yuck. Luckily, once we descended the mountain, we felt better. One of the cool highlights for Michael and Claire was that they got to see a banana slug, which are synonymous with the area. Even the mascot of University of Santa Cruz is the Banana Slug. How would you like that? And I thought my high school mascot which is a Kangaroo was a little odd . . .


After the Mystery Spot, we thought we would head to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk because we were too close to it to not let the kids put their toes in the ocean. We didn't bring a change of clothes or even a towel, so I asked the kids not to get too wet. I think they had the most fun pushing the limits to see if they could get wet, but not soaked. Matthew snoozed though all of it which was a loss for him, but allowed us some much needed relaxation time. Once we played a few games on the Boardwalk, ate too much salt water taffy, and had dinner at a quaint little Italian restaurant, we headed home. Mission accomplished. Damien can check off one of his must-dos for the summer, we got to breathe in some ocean air, and we spent some much needed family time together. Bring on the rest of the summer . . .