Today we’re continuing our look at our trip to California from back in July. If you missed the first post check it out>>>>San Fransisco Trip Day 0 & 1 of our San Fran trip included:
We woke up to a cool view of farm lands in Watsonville, Ca.
Our first stop was Henry Cowell Redwood State Park.
We did the .8 mile loop labeled “Old Growth Loop” on this zoomed in map.
Henry Cowell Redwood State Park is known for to be an old-growth forest with the trees that that date back to the 1800s that weren’t chopped down for logging. There are trees that reach over 300 feet tall and 2,000 years old! Amazing!
As I was researching for this trip, I was looking for good Redwood spots and seeing that Big Basin Redwoods State Park was one of the best in the area we’d be covering. However, in 2020 they had a fire that they refer to as CZU Fire that covered 86,509 acres burned and 1,450 structures were lost. It was quite devastating. More info here if you’re interested >>> Impacts of the CZU Lightning Complex Fire / CZU Lightning Complex fires
I appreciated that the park has volunteers working. A nice volunteer gave us a trail map with descriptions of numbered locations that we could return at the end of our visit. She also told us about the Freemont Tree, which is not only one of the largest trees in the park at 270 feet high and 17 feet wide. It is also super unique in that you can crawl into the hollowed-out trunk. Here on the left you see Rob standing next to the entrance and the picture on the right is from the inside.
We spotted the what I believe is the Santa Cruz Beach train passing by on the Roaring Camp Railroad.
Henry Cowell wasn’t effected as badly as other parts of the Santa Cruz Mountains, but as we drove the Big Basin Hwy we saw some of the devastation. Seeing the trees rejuvenate and grow out of the ashes just shows you how resilient nature really is. location
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Lunch at Lazy Dog Restaurant – Since it was our first time they brought out these Waffle chips that were amazing! Rob had a quiche and I had a burrito.
Next stop was Apple Park Visitor Center.
This is just across the street from Apple Park, which is Apple Headquarters. It has nearly 3 million square feet of office space and cost 5 billion dollars (including cost of land $160 million). That is where everyone really wishes they could go, but since you can’t at the visitor center they have iPads that you can hold near the 3D model. Through AR technology you can virtually look into the building and see the different levels and we what it looks like inside.
From there we went over to Stanford University. We had a several things we wanted to get from the Stanford book store. We spent a while there figuring out what we wanted to buy. We didn’t want to buy things because we have connections to the university, rather it being our name.
Next stop was getting checked in to our hotel. We stayed at the historic Cardinal Hotel. We had found out before we got there but after we booked it, that they don’t have AC….We’re from Alabama, where we run the ceiling fan year round and the AC almost year round. Rob and I are both hot-natured.
Luckily we were able to open the windows and all the rooms had ceiling fans. It ended up being decently comfortable, but we still missed being able to crank down the hotel room AC to 65…just because we can. 🙂 Who’s with me???
Anyway, so once we got settled in we walked over to Pizzeria Delfina for dinner and meeting up with some folks from the conference (Jeff & Kristen). We had the Salsiccia pizza and Delfina’s Buttermilk Panna Cotta for dessert.
After that Rob and I walked around a bit more to check out the area and realized that Palo Alto is a really great little place. Highly recommend!
More pics from the day>>>Day 2
I’m definitely with you on the AC! When we were in Spain, they had AC, but nothing like American AC. Thank goodness it wasn’t too hot. It was more like very slightly cooled air instead of cold!