Beach Christmas

Started: 2022-12-30 10:11:57

Submitted: 2022-12-30 10:29:16

Visibility: World-readable

Beach Christmas, I gave you my heart; but the very next day you rained it away

When our flight to Seattle for Christmas was canceled we were stuck in Santa Cruz for Christmas. The forecast for Christmas was warm and sunny (at least, by winter standards) at 68°F, so we went to the beach, on the last clear day before a series of rain storms brought water to Northern California.

By the time our flight was canceled, we had already observed our own holiday celebrations with our family, so we didn't have presents to open on Christmas morning. We ate brunch together, then drove to Seabright Beach just before noon. Seabright Beach is, geographically, our nearest beach, just down the hill from our house; but it's a bit far to walk and there's very little parking, so we usually visit other beaches further away with better parking. On Christmas morning I guessed that parking would be available, and it turned out I was right.

When we arrived at the beach there were some people already there but there was plenty of room. The tide was high and ebbing; Christmas Day was two days after the year's highest tide, but there was plenty of sandy beach above the high-tide line. I walked the length of the beach, from the sandstone bluff separating the beach from the San Lorenzo River (and, on the other side of the river, Main Beach and the Beach Boardwalk) to the jetty protecting the channel leading to small craft harbor, surrounded by tetrapods and capped by the Walton Lighthouse.

I watched the waves crashing on the tetrapods protecting the jetty from the waves, occasionally splashing up on the concrete walkway leading to the lighthouse.

The beach filled out as the afternoon progressed. Calvin dug a foxhole for his camp chair and sat there for the rest of the afternoon. I dug a three-foot-deep well but I was too far above the water to actually reach water at the bottom of the hole, so I let Julian claim it as a foxhole. He dropped his camp chair in the hole and it was big enough to completely hide him beneath ground level.

The air was warm enough that some people (mostly children) were splashing in the waves, though Monterey Bay remains chilly year-round. (Julian has outgrown his wetsuit, and is also too big for the replacement Kiesa got him at a thrift store, so we'll have to find a bigger size for him. I suggested, half-joking, that we keep all of our old kid-sized wetsuits so we have appropriate beach attire for visitors.) When we arrived there were three people surfing in the waves at the end of the beach, in front of the bluff; when we left I counted seven people.

We stayed at the beach for a couple of hours, then packed up and headed home.

In the evening, after watching a version of The Nutcracker on streaming (it seemed that Netflix doesn't have any versions, so Kiesa found one on Kanopy) and a small Christmas dinner, we drove back to Seabright to visit Farley's Christmas Wonderland, which I discovered on Google Maps. This is some guy who sets up an elaborate Christmas display in his back yard every year and lets people visit for free (he does have a donations bucket, which go to his electrical bill and storage costs).

We parked on a tiny residential street in Seabright, just beyond the gate decorated with Christmas lights. We stepped through the gate into the modestly-sized back yard, which was completely packed full of Christmas decorations. The picture above shows approximately one-quarter of the yard; the rest of the yard was about as crowded.

The back wall of the yard was the house, and along that wall there were two displays set up with elaborate animatronic dioramas. (The hooded figure in the picture is Julian, though you can't tell from the picture alone. He is wearing the jacket I had to buy for him when, the day before we were supposed to leave for Christmas, I discovered that he had lost the jacket I was planning for him to take to skiing, so we had to make a last-minute trip to REI. It's kind of a struggle to get him to wear any seasonally-appropriate outer wear, even in Santa Cruz where a light jacket is appropriate most of the winter (one morning, as I was getting ready to take the kids to school, Julian whined, "But you didn't tell me I was supposed to wear a jacket today!") so I guess I ought to be happy he wore it at all.)

Around the corner from the dioramas were two fairy gardens, complete with fairy doors and glowing fairy lights that messed up my exposure of Julian in the picture.

I was impressed by the variety of Christmas trees in the display, including the garishly-colored pink tree, along with others missing from my pictures.

I took the opportunity for a photo with an almost-human-sized nutcracker, and I got a picture of Julian with a reindeer tucked in between two brightly-colored Christmas trees.

Farley's Christmas Wonderland was a fascinating Christmas display tucked away in a suburban back yard. I'll put it on my list of things we should visit next year as our new Christmas tradition.