James Gaston

A short sail up the Bospo..

Spice Bazaar

Big Basin State Park 22 Aug 2020 Big Basin State Park 22 Aug 2020 Santa Cruz California --

The news keeps delivering bad stuff, the latest being the fires in California. Especially sad is the news from the Santa Cruz mountains, near our old home. The destruction of the forest and the loss of animal and plant life is terrible. So here's a break from the re-visiting of Istanbul and instead I'm re-visiting Big Basin State Park.

Big Basin is the first California park I ever visited, and this was just a few days after completing my senior year at McCallum High School. I was so happy to get out of high school! I skipped the graduation ceremony, a habit I maintained throughout my academic career, and instead my friend Tim and I celebrated by driving my Toyota from Austin to northern California. We camped in Big Basin, visited his sister in Pacific Grove, then headed north, all the way to Vancouver, Canada.