Redwoods and roller coasters in Santa Cruz
The material in this story appeared earlier this week in Jim Byers’ weekday blog at thestar.com/travel.
SANTA CRUZ, CALIF.— The far north coast of California is famous for its redwoods, as is Muir Woods in Marin County, just outside San Francisco. But it’s hard to beat the ones you’ll find towering magnificently around the coast near the surf town of Santa Cruz, an hour and a bit south of San Francisco.
On a quick visit last week, I started the morning at The Ugly Mug coffee shop in the town of Soquel, just down the road from my family cabin. It’s a fabulous coffee spot on the main drag, just up from Capitola Beach, with a great local vibe.
In the Santa Cruz area, that means advertisements for acoustic music and raw milk in the window, local art on the walls and a list of characters that run the gamut from flower child to motorcycle dudes to local ranchers and surfers, all rolling in for their lattes and pastries.
I got back to our cabin and told my Dad I’d read something in one of the local magazines about a good German restaurant in a nearby town called Ben Lomond. My Dad being fond of German food (he also used to turn on the radio Sunday mornings to listen to oom-pah-pah music, or so my Mom used to tell me), I mentioned it to him. Hearing about Ben Lomond prompted him to recall being a teenager in Oakland and driving down in a friend’s Model A to go to dances or go swimming in the area. He also talked about a place called the Brookdale Lodge, where he said ariver ran through the dining room.
Alas, the German place was closed for lunch and Brookdale Lodge has been shuttered for a couple of years. It’s in a state of dusty disrepair but the security guard was nice enough to briefly show off the place.
The dining room doesn’t look too much different from the way it did back in the day, my Dad said. The river still runs down the middle, and there are banks of tables that rise toward a high wall featuring bits of stained glass. There’s a magnificent glass light fixture hanging over it all and a small bridge at one end. It’s said that former U.S. president Herbert Hoover used to fish off the bridge for brook trout, and my Dad said you could catch your own fish in the stream and give it the kitchen staff, who’d prepare it for your dinner. The nearby town of Ben Lomond feels like a small city you’d find in Oregon or the interior of British Columbia, with old wood fronts and a casual, outdoorsy feel. We stopped at the old Mac’s Bar, where folks used to pin dollar bills to the ceiling with darts. It’s now a fun shop featuring all sorts of old-time knick knacks; Pinocchio dolls and old car models and fun signs.
From there we backtracked to Felton and then took Highway 9 back into Santa Cruz. It’s a winding road that drops through a line of tall, beautiful redwoods. It’s a thick, luscious canopy that feels like a cathedral, with broken light cascading through the green treetops and the deep smell of redwood and fog and sunshine all at once.
We motored into Santa Cruz and opted to have a bowl of chowder and a beer out on the wharf, where you can dine behind tall panes of glass that keep out the wind. The surfers were dashing about in the waves off to the west at Steamer Lane — a legendary surf break.
The pier in Santa Cruz is a great spot for a bite, a stroll or fishing. And the views are great. You can see the cliffs and homes on West Cliff Drive to the west. To the east is the old-timey Santa Cruz boardwalk with its historic merry-go-round and one of the oldest wooden roller coasters in the world. You can email Jim Byers at jbyers@thestar.ca. Be sure to check his blog each weekday at www.thestar.com/travel. You also can follow him on Twitter @jimbyerstravel.