Santa Cruz Coastal Mountains & Pigeon Point Light House

One Saturday morning Karen and decided to take a drive down Hwy. 9 through the mountains. We started in San Jose grabbed a Starbucks in Los Gatos and headed down to Big Basin State Park on Hwy. 236. We drove through the majestic redwood trees and down to Boulder Creek.

Big Basin Redwoods

 

 We then proceeded to head down Hwy.1 to Costanoa Campgrounds in Pescadero CA. Costanoa is a interesting place to stay. Connected to four state parks, 30,000 acres of hiking trails and a vibrant wildlife reserve, Costanoa offers the unique opportunity to experience outdoor living in comfortable, stylish surroundings. Accommodations include canvas cabins, Douglas Fir cabins and a forty room lodge. Special features include on-site spa services, horseback riding, mountain bike rentals, children? s activities and a General Store and Cafe. We read the local attractions guide in the lodge and it recommended that we try the famous Artichoke / Garlic bread at Norm's Market in Down Town Pescadero...so off we went.

Tent Cabin

Comfort Station

  

We then headed down the road to Pigeon Point lighthouse. Perched on a cliff on the central California coast, the 115-foot Pigeon Point Lighthouse, one of the tallest lighthouses in America, has been guiding mariners since 1872. Its five-wick lard oil lamp, and first-order Fresnel lens, comprised of 1,008 prisms, was first lit at sunset, November 15, 1872. The lens stands 16 feet tall, 6 feet in diameter, and weighs 8,000 pounds. It sits in a lantern room that had been constructed at the Lighthouse Service's general depot in New York before being shipped around the Horn. Although the original Fresnel lens is no longer in use, the lighthouse is still an active U.S. Coast Guard aid to navigation using a 24 inch Aero Beacon.

After visiting the light house we proceeded south down Hwy.1 to Downtown Pescadero  and ran across hundreds of Kite Surfers along the coast.

  

Once in Pescadero we strolled down Main Street visiting many of the unique antiquity shops in the area. We stopped into a local store called Norm's Market to try their famous Artichoke / Garlic bread.


 

This is their signature bread--They take whole roasted and seasoned Artichoke quarters and hand-roll them into the Garlic Herb French dough. Each loaf of bread contains the equivalent of 2-4 small-to-midsized artichoke hearts, cut into quarters! You won't find anything like this anywhere! A very popular loaf. They sell it about 80% baked so you can take it home and finish it your oven. We did not know this at the time... but it tasted great anyway.