Mediocre Mystery

Pam and I visited the famous Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz this weekend, and I can tell you this: your $5 ticket (plus $5 for parking) is better spent on many other things, including donations to the Red Cross or paying a maid to come to your house and clean up the fecal material left by the slugs that were crawling around on your shower tiles that one time several years ago after the big rain storm (oh wait, YOUR bathroom doesn't have that?).

The Mystery Spot (photos coming for next post) is not much more than the same visual perception trick done over and over again in slightly varying ways to make small things appear larger. That said, can I explain it? Well, no. So, yes, the spot is aptly named, but I grew tired of it rather quickly. The genius of the place is that it is situated just a tad bit north of the famous Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Everyone coming from the north has to pass the freeway exit for the Mystery Spot, thus a lot of people visit it on their way down. Plus, at the end of the "tour" everyone gets a free bumper sticker, which is how most of us heard of the Mystery Spot in the first place. Very smart.

We also went to the Boardwalk. A highlight was riding the Giant Dipper, the west coast's oldest wooden roller coaster. We got to go twice, back to back - the operator stopped the coaster a few feet past where he was supposed to, so he just sent us for another ride. Awesome! Unfortunately, it wasn't until we began the second trek that I thought of audioblogging. How cool would that have been, to post an audioblog of my ride on the Giant Dipper! Alas, it was not meant to be. Next time, though.