The beaches at Santa Cruz are truly a delightful surprise; this city and its beaches are shielded from the harsh weather by the surrounding mountains. The pleasant result is a warm, sunny climate and southward-facing beaches that are suitable for swimming and great for surfing. Santa Cruz is unique among Central California beaches in that people actually do more than just look at the water; they go in for quick swims, even though the water is a bit chilly. The surfers wear wet suits. Santa Cruz is such a big surfing town that locals claim that they deserve the title of "Surf City." Of the many local beaches, Santa Cruz (Main) Beach and Cowell Beach are the best for both water and land sports like volleyball and sunbathing.

Santa Cruz has one of the most famous boardwalks on the Pacific coast. Here at Main Beach you will find an amusement park that includes a huge indoor arcade named Neptune's Kingdom, and a traditional wooden roller coaster, one of the last of its kind on the California coast. While the 1987 Loma Prieta earthquake devastated the downtown area and caused some structural problems at the seaside amusement park, all the damage has been repaired. Santa Cruz is still a mecca for "flower children," a real throwback to the 1960s. Old beat-up Volkswagen buses still plod along the coastal roads. I saw one VW that was hand-painted with an array of bright colors and had a sign on the back that read "Don't laugh, your daughter could be inside."

Half Moon Bay is probably on few people's list of stops, but this beach is a classic for coastal geologists. This long crescent-shaped beach is anchored at the north by a headland that juts out into the Pacific Ocean. The prevailing waves are from the northwest so that the south-end, exposed beaches experience the biggest surf. The wave action decreases northward as the protection of the northern headland becomes more effective. The sand size and beach slope correspond perfectly to the wave conditions. The exposed southern beach section is characterized by very coarse sand and steeply sloping beaches. The northern, protected beach has relatively fine sand and gently sloping beaches, while the central section beaches are in between these two extremes. Half Moon Bay is where the famous coastal engineer Willard Bascom first documented this important coastal relationship in the scientific literature.

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