Our last stop was the Santa Cruz County Horseman’s Camp in Felton, California. This is a private campground - you have to be a member of the SCCHA or a guest of a member. Guests pay $15/night for a campsite. The campsite is primitive - no hook-ups. But there are water faucets throughout the campground. There is a shower house and bathrooms, but these require a key card. You need a key card to open the gate. There is a convenience store across the street if you need to buy basic supplies, like eggs or milk. The campground features an obstacle course, two arenas, a cross country course, and a round pen and provides access to Henry Cowell State Park. It’s about 15 minutes from Downtown Santa Cruz. I purchased a family membership, so I could give Elaine a key card and sticker for her vehicle. That way she could continue to stay at the campground after we left or return there if she needed a place while she explores Northern California.
I spent the week working on-site at my new position at Google X on their campus in Mountain View, called The Rails. It is located in the old Mayfield Mall across from the San Antonio CalTrain stop. This involved Ari dropping me off at a shuttle stop in Scotts Valley (about 15 minutes away), taking a GBus (a shuttle bus provided by Google) to the Googleplex campus on Charleston Road in Mountain View (about an hour’s ride) and then taking a second connector shuttle to my building. Then doing the reverse trip in the evening. This way Ari had the truck so he and Elaine could play tourist during the day. And play tourist, they did…visiting Natural Bridges, riding the Narrow Gauge steam train in Felton, and doing day rides at nearby Wilder Ranch.
It wasn’t all awful drudgery for me. On Thursday, my team was treated to an afternoon at the Culinary Institute of Arts in Napa, where we enjoyed free cocktails (including this lovely non-alcoholic mojito) and a full course meal by chefs in training.
Each diner received an apron and a small pouch filled with sunflower seeds. Spoiler: I work for Mineral, an AI-driven project to help farmers grow and harvest their crops using less harmful chemicals and getting more yield.
On Saturday, we hauled the horses up to Newcastle, CA where a friend has kindly agreed to give them the soft landing that all equine companions deserve. They are sharing this large pasture with a shelter. We needed some breathing room so we don’t have to worry about the horses and focus on moving back into our sticks and bricks house. We have three years of deferred maintenance to catch up on and I want to work to rebuild our savings before we launch our next adventure.
Have we hung up our boots? I don’t know. I plan on having surgery to remove the plate in my foot which made riding for long periods painful. I need to see how that surgery goes. Ideally, everything goes well and we will move the horses to a local barn and resume rides on weekends and holidays, with an occasional horse camping trip in the mix. But, if not, the horses are someplace safe with plenty of food, other horses to swap stories in nearby pastures, and we will be able to check in on them regularly.
This is the end of a chapter, but not the end of our wandering ways. I hope people find this blog useful to help plan their own chapters in equestrian adventures. It will remain a resource if you want to find a campground or explore an area.