A Crowded July Day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

Day after the Fourth, and half of Northern California had the same idea about Santa Cruz. The Boardwalk beach was packed end to end — a mile of public sand on Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, most of it claimed by umbrellas and coolers by the time we got there.

We kept to the river end, near the mouth of the San Lorenzo under the old railroad trestle, where the water spreads out shallow enough for a two-year-old to sit in it. Kids everywhere in that stretch, dogs, people wading out to the sandbar.

The park itself has been running since 1907 — oldest amusement park in California, and the only major seaside one left on the whole West Coast. The Giant Dipper's white frame has been standing over the beach since 1924, and the Looff Carousel inside is older still, 1911. Both are National Historic Landmarks, which is an odd thing to think about with a Ferris wheel spinning next to them.

Sand pile at the waterline, half our daughter's and half her mother's, both of them waving from the middle of it.