Santa Cruz is America’s original “Surf City”. While there’s still plenty of surfing to be seen, on this driving tour you’ll discover that there’s so much more to the city than catching waves!

Starting at the Graham Hill pullout, you’ll wind along West Cliff Drive to the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum and Natural Bridges State Beach before making your way to the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). There, you’ll see the city’s mighty coastal redwood trees before taking a slow cruise back to the Visitors Centre and Marianne’s Ice Cream store, where our tour ends. En route, you’ll hear how the Town Clock has been a staging spot for protests, and learn the difference between art and graffiti while taking in a sculpture at Pyramid Park. I’ll also point out the unusual looking Court of Mysteries and tell you how its owner got around city planners. Along the way, I’ll show you the must-see sights to take in if you’re pressed for time, and point out places that you can explore at your leisure. You could easily fill a whole weekend!

On this Santa Cruz tour, you can look forward to:

• Hiking along a sandy ancient seabed that’s now hundreds of feet above sea level and seven miles inland at Graham Hill
• Exploring Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center’s interactive displays of an underwater canyon that’s wider and deeper than the Grand Canyon
• Watching talented surfers at Steamer Lane, a famous break
• Seeing monarch butterflies congregate at Natural Bridges State Beach in the winter
• Smelling the flowers as you stroll through UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and Botanic Garden’s outdoor tree museum
• Attending a concert in the shadows of giant redwoods at UCSC
• Soaking up Pogonip Vista Point’s views of mountains, three types of forest, the ocean and a roller coaster
• Taking in architecture from 1791 through to Victorian times
• Puzzling over the depiction of the Santa Cruz Sea Monster

By the end of this one-hour tour, you’ll have a taste of what Santa Cruz County can offer, along with some fantastic photos and memories! You might also leave with a full tummy and some terrific stories to share as you’ll hear stories unique to Santa Cruz.

I mention in the tour that you should come back here to explore a 3D model of a pocket watch that melted in the gunpowder mill explosion of 1898. Here’s the link to see it: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/melted-pocket-watch-8689d860ddb34f01a51eadbf2e6383f3 Please don’t look at it while operating a vehicle!