Santa Cruz: Waves And Whales!

We passed through a couple of Sketchy towns on the way down to Santa Cruz, the most memorable being Garberville. We were making a pit stop and we both got back in the car as fast as possible. We were in the middle of Humbolt county, which is apparently the pot-growing capital of the world and it must attract more homeless folks than nice warm Florida sun. I never actually saw anybody sitting in public smoking a joint, but we saw plenty of places to buy the stuff. Just a few miles down the road things seemed more like normal and then there was Santa Cruz. We hit Santa Cruz and suddenly there were joggers, surfers, the homeless and the filthy rich all mingling. I seemed to notice way more young twenty-somethings on vacation here than anywhere else...or it could be the students from the nearby college. We watched whales for hours and not 100 yards away was some of the best surfing I'd seen in a long time. Steamer Lane was still going off from a recent nearby hurricane and it was incredible to see the age mix in the water, from a tiny little French kid to a guy that looked older than me, they were all tearing it up in what looked to be an extremely dangerous place...