After last night’s adventures, including the fact that we ended up getting home from the fireworks around 11PM or so after the horrible traffic management in Scotts Valley, I figured today would be a day of more or less resting, but as is often the case, this was not quite the way it happened, although admittedly we did end up getting started a bit late because I spent the morning typing up book reviews that I am still behind on.  At any rate, by about 1PM or so we were ready to go on more adventures, and indeed today was a day of adventures, although admittedly they had more walking in them than I would have personally preferred.  Sometimes that sort of thing cannot be helped, though.  At any rate, let us talk about today’s adventures.

After we left the house we decided to try an unfamiliar restaurant called the Heavenly Cafe.  While we were waiting to order there was a bit of humor about the failure of the young person who was working as a host to fully set up the table, bring menus, bring silverware, and so on.  The waitress, several times during the course of the our time there, commented about kids and their lack of awareness.  Later on we ended up talking about the problem of high wages in California and the way that this makes it unprofitable to hire clueless young people who obviously cannot be profitable to hire at the wages that businesses are obligated to pay.  We managed to eat different foods–I had a chinese chicken salad because it was the only thing on the menu I could order without having to take something off, and otherwise we found the food pretty tasty.

After eating we headed to Fenton, where we had spent a bit of time yesterday.  We found a covered bridge park near the center of town and managed to cross over a creek and do a bit of walking.  Before doing that, though, my two travel companions went hunting for four-leaf clovers, which they were unsuccessful in finding.  I was unsure while they were looking for such a thing, but it gave me time to ponder the way that people in California tend to use parks, as I saw some people sunning themselves as if they were on a beach, and someone else reading in one of the nooks of the covered bridge, and others walking their dogs and children running around the play area, all of which made for a lovely place.

When we left the covered bridge park, we found a small-gauge railway not too far away as we headed south, and so we went inside even though the train rides for the day were already sold out and the parking was $10.  The place had a wedding today, so it was interesting seeing the bridesmaids walk around and see the obviously well-dressed people heading for the wedding while the crowds of people were engaged in the various touristy activities that were going on there, ranging from listening to cowpokes sing, watching people ride horseback, and panning for gold, and even walking across America’s smallest covered bridge.  Although the woman at the parking lot said that we could just walk around, and there are few things I would less want to do, it ended up being an enjoyable place to spend some time.  After we finished there we headed south to CA-1 and then went to Soquel, where we had found some antiques shopping.  I sat in the car and read while the others did some shopping and it was enjoyable for all of us, I think.

After we returned to Scotts Valley we looked around a bit unsuccessfully for our driver’s pocketwatch, which was later found in the pants he had worn yesterday, and then had something to drink and relaxed for a bit before we went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant that ended up being cashless.  After that was done, having eaten a fair amount of tasty food with chopsticks, it was time to go back to our homebase and rest for the evening, and I was definitely ready for that.