We opted to go green instead of black on the Friday following Thanksgiving. I planned an outing to Santa Cruz that hit all our favorite places and a new one.
We started the morning with a hike around Mount Hermon. It was neat to show our family this place that has become so special to us. To hike around in the fall was a treat! Leaves were changing and banana slugs were EVERYWHERE! We found about 17 of them on the short looping trail through the redwoods. The picture below is my favorite of the whole week. Auntie Karen was taking a closeup picture of the huge slug on her hand when Aidan finally worked up the nerve to touch the thing right as the camera snapped. She caught his look of horror and disgust!
After Mount Hermon, we hit two more favorites-- lunch at Pizza My Heart and pirate mini golf on the Boardwalk. We took a short walk down the pier too.
The high point of this Santa Cruz Day was our visit to the Mystery Spot. I have actually been saving this outing for an Aidan visit, since he is the one who introduced my girls to the intrigue of the show Brain Games. The Mystery Spot is either a huge optical illusion OR a true gravitational anomaly, explained by crazy things like aliens, or a hole in a ozone layer, or iron under the earth. At the Mystery Spot, balls roll and water flows uphill. Taller people appear shorter. You are physically unable to stand up straight. Some of us went into it pretty skeptical and cynical. But, the kids kept encouraging us to "Become a believer!" We had a fun, enthusiastic attitude and our family had a blast here! It also helped that we were the only Americans in our tour group. And our guide was phenomenal and hilarious, a theater major we guessed.
Members of our family volunteered every time our guide asked! Here are Aidan and Ella showing how their height changes depending on what side of the Mystery Spot they stand on. The crazy thing is that our guide laid a level down and showed us that the ground was, in fact, perfectly level here!
The story goes that a cabin built up on a hill slid down it, pulled by the Mystery Spot's mysterious gravity. The cabin now sits at nausea-inducing slanty angles. Inside it you can feel all sorts of weird standing in ways you should not be able to.
Outside the crazy cabin, we were treated to another demonstration in height changes, featuring 3 people from our family. See how Dave shrunk? Once again, the ground is supposedly level here.
When you visit the Mystery Spot, you get to take home as many free bumper stickers as you like! (So you can be a part of their brilliant "free advertising plan", our guide explained.) Sooooo...is the Mystery Spot real or an illusion? You'll have to visit and decide for yourself. But, I will tell you two odd things that we experienced that made us become believers! One, some of us were immediately motion sick when we got out of the car up in those woods. I felt dizzy and queasy and "off" the whole time, until we drove away. And two, while we were parked in the parking lot, our van's GPS said that we were actually driving (and driving fast-- up to 30 miles an hour)...IN THE DIRECTION OF THE MYSTERY SPOT!
After the Mystery Spot, we had some pressert (before dinner dessert) at Marianne's. The scoop of ginger ice cream I ordered, with chunks of real candied ginger in it!, was just what my unsettled stomach needed after our time at the Mystery Spot.
Before driving home, we found a spot by the Santa Cruz lighthouse to watch the sun set. Cuddling up by the crashing surf, watching the sky turn pretty colors was the perfect ending to a day packed with fun and favorites...and MYSTERY! :)
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