We took a day off from volksmarching today (probably the first of several), though we did take a couple of walks around the neighborhood while it wasn’t raining.

I cleaned up the kitchen desk this afternoon, getting rid of dozens of pens that had accumulated over the years. Some brought back memories of the early days of the Web and e-commerce; some were just junk.

We finally watched Barbie this evening and enjoyed it. I don’t know how they got Mattel’s buy-in!

We spent most of today in Santa Cruz enjoying the views as we walked the Striders‘s Natural Bridges Walk. We parked on Natural Bridges Drive near the landside entrance to Natural Bridges State Beach instead of paying $10 to park near the beach. The Monarch Trail starts just a couple of hundred feet from the landside entrance, and soon enough, we encountered a couple of monarch butterflies taking advantage of the privacy and the warm weather.

There were quite a few monarchs flying around the area, too.

We continued to the boardwalk and the viewing area; it was a few degrees cooler there, and most of the monarchs were still in their clusters in the trees waiting for the sun to warm them.

We passed a small pond filled with duckweed; there were even a couple of ducks swimming around.

Even though it was pretty cool, there were people swimming in the park.

We turned onto Cliff Drive and walked far enough to meet the minimum 5k distance to get credit for the walk.

The start box for the walk is at the Togo’s on Ocean Street, so we went there for lunch to thank them for supporting our club. No photo of the food – sorry!