A restless night of sleep, awake at 6am but we got up closer to 8. We ate breakfast at Posh Bagel, an old standby in the Bay Area. I went to NikeTown to try to talk to the store manager for a story for our internal magazine, but it was so busy that I just ended up taking photos around the store. I met up with Erik at H&M, where we both did a bit of shopping.
After checking out of the hotel, we drove down to Santa Cruz-- getting out of the city was horrendous and we also tried to go to Maggie Mudd (my fourth unsuccessful attempt). We grabbed a snack in Cupertino on the way to Santa Cruz at a cool little Japanese fast food place called Quickly, and headed straight to Charlie Hong Kong for lunch. We went down to the main drag to grab cupcakes from the bakery that made our wedding cakes, which used to be sold at a local grocery store chain. The grocery store didn't have them, and we also had unsuccessful peeks in my favorite shoe and hat stores.
Next we headed to Natural Bridges State Beach, but along West Cliff Drive we saw a huge O'Neill stage next to the Lighthouse Beach, so we pulled over and watched surfers for a while. We parked at our usual spot for Natural Bridges to walk the path through the eucalyptus grove and marsh lands. After taking pictures on the beach, we decided to search out the monarch butterfly resting grove that we'd never seen, and we found it. It was astounding to walk down the monarch trail and not see any butterflies, then suddenly realize that the leaves on the trees were fluttering and alive.
At that point we were short on time and had to ditch our plan to go to Kiva. Instead we checked another New Leaf grocery store for Black China Bakery cupcakes, and were again unsuccessful. We went straight to the airport, then, and used the extra time to review our photos. The plane was near empty-- the least crowded flight I've been on in years-- at least five. Returning to Portland was... what it always has been, since the first time I came here: coming home.