Notes from our opinionated writers on the best of Santa Cruz County community life.
Best All-Around Capability Training
Classes at Quail Hollow Ranch County Park
How did Grandma do it? She knew all about the insects, plants and animals on her farm, could garden like a fiend and knew how to make good bread and lemonade. At Quail Hollow Ranch, the original home of the Sunset magazine test kitchen and a natural marvel of 15 different ecosystems, approximately one gazillion classes, workshops and interpretive walks are offered throughout the year, many of them free or very cheap, thanks to a generous grant. Topics range from identifying bats to composting to making cheese. Our readers may find some county offices unnecessary (See “Best Public Institution Worth Ditching,” page TK), but this is one county department we wouldn’t want to do without. (TH)
800 Quail Hollow Rd, Felton. 831.335.9348
Best Farmers Market Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Westside Farmers Market
The downtown farmers market is bigger, but I like the Westside market for its small size. It’s easy to park or, better yet, easy to bike to. It’s never very crowded, but crowded enough to make it a real community space for Westsiders and fans of H & H’s fish, Route 1 farm’s produce and the Everett Family Farms’ flowers, which also seem to be in bloom. (SH)
Sat, 9am-1pm year-round
Western Dr. and Mission St, Santa Cruz. 831.454.0566
Best Paddleboating
Loch Lomond Reservoir
While anglers reel in largemouth bass and bluegill and birders glass the redwoods for kingfishers and ospreys, paddleboaters can cruise three-mile-long Loch Lomond at their own pace, visiting the tiny island of Clar Innis or chugging (using human power, thank you) out to an old pier for a picnic under the trees. From March to October, there’s no better way to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon—or better yet, a play-hookie Wednesday. (TH)
100 Loch Lomond Way, Lompico. 831.335.7424
Best Place to Appreciate Why We Live Here
UCSC Music Building Terrace
Architect Antoine Predock knew exactly what he was doing when he embedded his monumental neo-modernist complex deep into the hillside and aimed it at the sloping hillside and ocean beyond. From the long terrace of the graceful Music Complex (the terrace is named for benefactor Bud Kretschmer) herds of deer graze undisturbed, students fall into non-digital meditations and far beyond, the ocean mirrors whatever swift or languid changes might be occurring in the sky. Here sunsets can become life-changing and moonrise the stuff of lifelong memories.
Yes, this is why we do not live in Buffalo. Enjoy it. (CW)
Meyer Drive, UCSC
Best Place to Reenact Wuthering Heights
Pogonip Trail Before A Storm
High atop the ridge overlooking the town, the county, the sweeping curve of the Monterey Bay, this slender path through the grasses and wild radishes is utterly romantic, especially in the atmospheric moments before a storm. Take your sweetheart up for an unforgettable, vista-splashed walk, where soft green meadows invite, well, sweet detours, and sweeping panoramas of foothills and gathering clouds offer nothing less than soul-stirring inspiration. Be Heathcliff! No, be Cathy! But in any case, be adventurous and watch for bobcats, coyotes and hawks. Gnarled and twisted oak trees form a romantic backdrop for a leisurely walk that could easily lead to anything. The only limit to Pogonip’s magic is your own imagination. (CW)
Pogonip, 333 Golf Club Dr, Santa Cruz.
Best Tree
Eucalyptus
Non-native, known for choking out other flora, feared for dropping debris, famously flammable, redeemed only as lodging for transient butterflies, eucalyptus remains a blessing for the local landscape. Whether a lone specimen, a small cluster, a thick grove as at Natural Bridges or a garden of hundreds of species as at the UCSC arboretum, eucalypts rule. The redwood may be majestic, the oak noble, madrone superb for firewood, the black walnut dramatic in its towering glory, but for sheer gratuitous beauty, give me the eucalyptus. (SK)
Best View
Coolidge Drive, UCSC
It’s worth a drive through campus just to come down the hill along the eastern border beyond Stevenson College and feast your eyes on the mountains, the town, the bay and beyond that the Monterey Peninsula. Whatever the weather, even when fog or overcast obscures the spectacular landscape, you feel you are floating as you roll down slowly from the City on A Hill. It’s almost worth going to school there just to have the breathtaking pleasure of leaving campus and seeing before your eyes what lies beyond. (SK)
—Paul M. Davis, Maria Grusauskas, Stett Holbrook, Traci Hukill, Cat Johnson, Eric Johnson, Stephen Kessler, Tessa Stuart, Christina Waters, Maya Weeks
