San Jose & Santa Cruz

On Tuesday morning, we start our epic journey South to San Diego. It will take one week to travel these 500 miles; our first stop is just an hour down the road at the Children's Museum of San Jose. We find lots to like, especially their amazing water play exhibit. Mark takes a video:



The coolest part is a curtain waterfall that fills with fog and then goes *poof* when a kid pulls the lever. It looks like this:



And here's a video of the big finale:



Keeping all this water clean is no small task, and Mark sweet-talks us into a private tour of the basement, where the water filters through a 500-gallon tank every two minutes.


Chris, on the museum exhibit staff, points out that the water for the fog cloud comes directly from the city water pipes, since you wouldn't want to make mist out of the chemically treated water. Overall, the San Jose water room an amazing piece of engineering, and even more impressively, it's a really fun place to play.

There are lots of other sweet spots in the museum, like the prehistoric toy table that captures Kobi and a few new friends for a round of predator & prey:



And there's an outdoor play garden where they keep bees. Yup, you read that right.



Eventually, we drag Kobi out amid much protest (you'd think our kids would be tired of children's museums by now!) and head to Santa Cruz.

Ah, Santa Cruz. Now this is our kind of town!

Santa Cruz is a blend of alternative lifestyle opportunities, tourist destinations & traditional Main Street-style shops and restaurants.



First off, they've got a nice canopy of trees going down the main drag. They've set some clear priorities on how to balance pedestrians and cars (hint: the walkers win). And the sidewalks are disarmingly lively, with intermittent kiosks, like this:



And, they've got inventive sidewalk dining. Here's a mini-forest jutting out onto the wide walkway, and a peek at the dining space inside:





They've got their own spin on how to keep those valuable Main Street parking spaces turning over quickly:



They've got wayfinding signs of the usual variety:



...and the not-so-usual:




There are handsome buildings, old...



...and new...



...and storefronts that express the personality of their keepers.



We spend our visit reveling in the Japanese manga shops, the huge independent bookstore, the coffeeshops, creative ice cream sellers, art displays and pick-up games of magic.

We're not the only people who find Santa Cruz a kindred spirit. A truck labeled PEACE travels up and down the street, until Mark stops him for a chat:



That's Santa Cruz. It's an inspiring place to be.