Pájaro ~ Thursday, July 02, 2020

We recently spend a long weekend at Pájaro Dunes, which is near Watsonville, CA, on the beach, and (important for any vacation right now) fairly isolated.

We enjoyed a nearly deserted beach.

It was the summer solstice, so we made a mandala in the sand.

There was nice wildlife!

Among nearby sights was this abandoned and clearly haunted old farmhouse:

Downtown Watsonville has signs of former and current railroading:

SCBG is the reporting mark of the Santa Cruz, Big Trees & Pacific, who might potentially someday run excursions between Santa Cruz and points south (those tracks now belong to Santa Cruz County, who have a web page about potential future passenger trains). We also visited the Martinelli's Apple Cider Plant, which has a company store, and we got to peek into the bottling warehouse for this view of old and modern equipment.

As I wrote about previously, I used historical topographic maps to track down the right-of-way of the long-defunct, narrow gauge electric Watsonville Transportation Company.

This bit of concrete flood-control seems to be on the site of a former RR brdige. Note the old bits of wood behind the modern concrete. I'm guessing that's part of the abutment of a long-ago bridge.

And look closer. A bit of old rail!

100+ years ago, the tracks went down to a pier, from which local agricultural products (then as now, mostly berries) were shipped:

We also spent a day paddling around in Elkhorn Slough, behind moss landing, but I'm not risking a camera or phone by getting one out in a small boat!

I'll conclude with this random scene around town: