Empire Grade fog

Empire Grade meadow, opposite UC Santa Cruz

The fog persisted well past mid-morning today. This old road heads south toward Moore Creek before turning east and leading into the Cave Gulch section of Wilder Ranch State Park.

Track of dreams

East Field track, University of California, Santa Cruz

The track at UC Santa Cruz is not a standard distance (just a tad over 800 meters), but the setting is sublime, sitting high over Monterey Bay. It merits a mention in Outside Online's list of the most scenic tracks in the country.

UCSC slug billboard

The signs on the side of UCSC's barn theater change every couple of weeks. A few weeks ago, they seemed (in retrospect) a bit too prescient:

University of California, Santa Cruz 

On Monday (4/20), normally a very busy day in Santa Cruz, I ran past the barn theater and found Jim Urban painting these over with a new billboard that has a timely message to banana slugs everywhere. (The banana slug is the UCSC mascot and students and alumni are also referred to as banana slugs.)

UCSC barn theater

Jim Urban has been hand-sketching and hand-painting these billboards since 1978. More on Jim Urban here.

UCSC trails

UCSC, Santa Cruz, California

The parks, trails, and beaches of Santa Cruz were closed last week to cut down on gatherings during Easter weekend. They have reopened, and I was able to run on some of the trails on the UC Santa Cruz campus this morning. This has to be one of the most unique college campuses in the country. There are meadows and fields full of cows, deer, and coyotes. And there are wild turkeys in the redwood forests and ravines. Somehow, they manage to hide 20,000 students up here in the hills.