Slow Adventure (Monterey Bay)

This was one of those trips when you don't know what to expect. My dear friend Jill arranged a multi-day walking tour of Monterey Bay. We would start in Santa Cruz and end up in a little village called Moss Landing. The journey was to be mostly on foot.

I flew to San Jose where I met Jill and we were picked up by this tall, excited woman, Margaret. Margaret owns Slow Adventure, a travel company that designs walking tours, makes all the reservations and makes sure your luggage gets to you along the way. We had a very personalized tour as Jill knows the owners and this is normally not the season to be doing this kind of thing along the northern California coast.

Margaret dropped Jill and I off at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz, a beautiful and quirky hotel right on the beach at the Santa Cruz wharf. We were on the top floor with an amazing view of the entire Monterey Bay.

The view from our top floor room at Dream Inn. That is the start of the wharf on the right.

Our first night we had dinner at Stagnaro Bros on the Santa Cruz wharf. We saw lots of birds, barnacles, star fish and sea lions on our walk on the wharf.

The next day was the start of walking tour. We followed the detailed directions and ended up at the Santa Cruz Harbor (we saw our first sea otter) for lunch with Margaret and her wife, Claire, at the Crow's Nest Restaurant for lunch. Let the drinking begin.

Our first sea otter. The Santa Cruz Harbor.

After lunch we continued our walk through the neighborhoods and along the cliff edge to Capitola On the Sea. We saw lovely homes and surfers.

Typical view along the coastal cliff.

We stayed in a charming bed and breakfast,  The Inn at Depot Hill. We had the Library Room where I slept in the Scrooge "Christmas Carol" bed ... with bed curtains.

The next day our walk started along railroad tracks that we first saw in Santa Cruz then eventually down to the beach. We had lunch in Rio Del Mar where we met up with Margaret again. Margaret gave Jill a boost to our next stop, the Seascape Beach Resort in Aptos. I continued walking the beach. I saw a dead sea lion as I approached the beach entrance to the resort.

The Seascape Resort is a real vacation resort with many accommodations and facilities spread out on the cliff above Monterrey Bay. This was our winter solstice stop.

We had a beach fire and s'mores after sunset to celebrate the longest night of the year.

The beach fire.

Winter solstice sunset.

Our last walking day was (supposed to be) the longest stretch. We left Seascape Resort after high tide and were to walk the beach 11 miles to Moss Landing. There wasn't much compacted sand so we were walking in soft sand which is very tiring.

This portion of the walk is fairly desolate. There are no towns and only a few state parks, some of which were closed for the season. We did see some surfers, shore birds and occasionally people walking their dogs.

Surfer waiting for a friend to come out of the surf. 

Seagull hanging out near the waves.

We were very luck to come upon two red hawks performing aerial acrobatics just above the cliff face. It was beautiful and awe-inducing.

We both tuckered out and contacted Margaret who found a spot to pick us up and "boost" us to Moss Landing.

Moss Landing is a harbor village of only 700 residents and even more sea lions and sea otters. We stayed at an amazing bed and breakfast, Captain's Inn, right on the Elkhorn Slough. You'll have to look up the pronunciation and definition of "slough".

Our appropriately amusing rooms looked out to the slough where there are tons of birds to watch and even sea otters.

Us at Captain's Inn, Moss Landing.

We took a sunset cruise with Whisper Cruises (just us and the boat captain) through the slough and out to the bay. We saw sea lions, seals, sea otters (with pups) and lots and lots of birds. The sunset was gorgeous! We even saw the launch of a Space X rocket though we didn't know exactly what it was at the time.

Sunset Moss Landing, Monterey Bay

Margaret picked us up the following day to take us back to the airport. On the way we stopped to see the red woods in Henry Cowell State Park. We lunched once more with Margaret and Claire then flew back to Medford for Christmas in Ashland.

The required "stand in front of red wood" photo.

This account just tells the mechanics of the adventure. The friendship, love, laughter, tears, stories and the parts that don't make sense when written or told are what I will always remember and treasure.

Christmas Cookies (includes recipe)

Made mom's recipes for light and dark Christmas cookies. I'm biased but I think they are the best. The recipes are below.

Look, a bone spur like me!

Light
1/3 C shortening (I use unsalted butter)
1/3 C sugar
1 egg
2/3 C honey
2 3/4 C flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon extract

Dark
1/3 C shortening (I use unsalted butter)
1/3 C dark brown sugar
1 egg
2/3 C molasses
2 3/4 C flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger

Combine shortening and sugar. Add egg and other liquid.
Mix dry ingredients together. Add in dry ingredients in thirds.
Refrigerate dough for at least an hour. I've kept in in refrig for 24+ hours.

Roll out only the amount you can use. Keep rest in refrigerator.

Bake 10 mins at 350°.

Christmas Decor

Bike rim wreaths

The Christmas cactus this year.

Frankie and Uno from mom.

Wrapping Paper Gift Bags

Saw a video on YouTube on wrapping (link here). It included ideas for wrapping odd-shaped items. One of the ideas was to make gift bags out of wrapping paper. I found the instructions on WikiHow (link here).

I made a couple of modifications. Instead of folding down the "top" just once, I did it twice so that it created a thicker band for the handle holes.


Secondly I made the handles by just tying the raffia into a loop. This actually closes the bag pretty well.

Did most of these while I was on hold with Hennepin Department of Health and Human Services. It was actually very fun. These all came out to be about the same size but the nice thing is you can make them any size you want.

Home improvement project - sun room

I planned on painting the sun room quite a while ago based on the date of the paint I bought for the project. It is a dreaded painting project because it is almost all window and door trim. I also had to repair a bit of water damage on the ceiling.

Also, the base-board radiators are a problem because one had to be removed which exposes the pipe and another section also has an exposed pipe without a cover leaving the plaster wall exposed. It probably isn't possible to repair the plaster behind the radiators. So my solution was to try to make them go away.

Corner before

Corner in progress

Corner complete

Theodore Wirth winter

One of the things I love about traveling is the contrasts. Just a few days ago I was on a sunny and warm beach. Today I'm back home it was cold and it snowed over night.

Cozumel vacation in photos (2) swimming with fish

We only snorkeled off the hotel but it is all we needed to see big and small fish, coral and amazing sponges.

One of my favorites - angel fish.

Jill swimming with the fish.

A pair of green moray eels.

A very large snail eating a starfish.

A man-made reef.

The 'wall'. So many different colored sponges.

Jill swimming with fish.

A tube sponge.

Cozumel vacation in photos (1)

Another great post-Thanksgiving vacation in Cozumel, Mexico. The weather was fantastic. My vacation mate, Jill, and I relaxed, ate, drank, snorkeled, walked (and Jill shopped).

My amazing friend, Jill, and I photo-bombed by an iguana.

Beautiful weather.

Sailing is a new option at Coral Princess. We didn't.

Super moon over the Caribbean.

Took some time but captured this photo of sparrow-sized yellow bird.

Cozumel Ironman. This guy is the leader and eventual pro male winner.

Drama

So much fun with crosswords.

I did get stung by two fire ants. Just two but very painful and lasted all week!