Watsonville and Santa Cruz

We stopped in Watsonville, CA for a couple of days in order to go to Santa Cruz. But we found quite a bit to see in Watsonville itself!

There are 13 apple box label murals located all over town. They are exact replicas of box and crate labels used in the early 1900s.

This was my favorite - two labels in a field on one mural. Apples and strawberries are both big here.

From this distance, this looks like a row of different colored buildings. But it is one large building covered in murals, home of the Monterey Bay Spice Company.

They represent all different kinds of businesses.

And even the top floor has stuff going on.

The entire building was painted by one person.

The detail is amazing.

Although most of the windows are painted on, this one looks like it was a real window at one time.

One afternoon we went over to see Santa Cruz. It's the ultimate beach town.

We walked out on the pier -

And found tons of sea lions hanging out on boards at least 6 feet out of the water. They must have come when the tide was up.

Apparently, these guys did not read the tide tables, and were very frustrated.

The shoreline is beautiful, especially here in the late afternoon.

Pelicans are very social animals, several hundred of them were hanging with their friends on a rock just offshore.

But the main reason we came to Santa Cruz was to see my niece Kamela and her son Anthony. Kam made us pizza like my mother-n-law used to. I was in heaven. Anthony just turned 12 and is quite talented.

He is a champion little league baseball player - here's the photo of him sliding into home that was in the Santa Cruz newspaper.

And he can also sing and play the guitar. AND if that's not enough, he is a ballroom dancer! Oh, and he's smart too. He wants to go to Stanford like his mom. You can probably tell from his t-shirt...