Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Spring Break 2010- Part 1

Spring break for us kicked off March 21. Since it had been 8 weeks of no days off for me, and 8 weeks of time that Dwayne and I had not had together, we booked a room in California and decided to go somewhere and do something for spring break. Dwayne booked us a room in Santa Cruz and on Sunday morning, March 21st after I was off work, we loaded up and headed out of town. We spent some time running errands in Reno and then drove onward to the outlet mall at Vacaville. We shopped, bought some new things and then continued our drive on to Santa Cruz.



Dwayne booked us a very nice room.




After getting a good night's sleep we got up and got ready to head out and see what the Cali coast had to offer!

Our first stop was "The Mystery Spot" a local tourist attraction in the Santa Cruz area. Apparently it has been featured on various scientific shows and is a phenomenon of sorts.




These two are perfectly level. They are standing on perfectly level ground, complete with a leveler to prove it.


Then they switched spots, and the stranger went into what is known as "the mystery spot" and suddenly he was way shorter than Dwayne, even though the ground is perfectly level.

Up the hill inside the mystery spot is a tool shed that the original owner of the land built. This place made it look like you were all sideways and the gravity pull was weird. You were feeling kind of dizzy too when you walked up the hill to get here. Aside from the gravitational pull we are pretty sure this part of the place was simply an optical illusion.

The tour guide put a wood plank on the windowsill and rolled this ball on it. It rolled uphill! He gave it to Dwayne to inspect and make sure it was a legit pool ball.


He even rolled my lip gloss on the wooden plank to show that they hadn't set it up funny or anything.


After they gave us the spill about the lay of the land and the history behind the tool shed we were allowed to roam around inside and take pictures.


Dwayne got his lean on by standing on the table and leaning toward the ground. Usually if you were to lean this far on a normal table and area you would fall over, but not in the mystery spot.

Next it was my turn to get my lean on!

They had different places you could stand and go against gravity inside the shed.


Some very nice guys offered to take our picture together for us. It was definitely difficult to walk around inside "the mystery spot."


In this picture the tour guide pulled three people from the group to stand on the spots. The difference between where Dwayne is standing and the child is standing is only about 2 inches. The side Dwayne is standing on is the taller side.


Look at the major difference when they switched spots!


So then the guide paired the two who were closer in height on the spot.


And then they switched and the guy shrank big time!


At the end of the tour you get a bumper sticker and there is a gift shop you can look around in. They encourage everyone to revisit the site and bring their own levelers to check the ground and also to bring their own compass because at certain areas in the mystery spot the compass gets thrown out of whack with the different directions not being right.


The mystery spot was kind of secluded inside this tree heavy area.


The road behind Dwayne is the road we had to drive on to get to the spot. That skinny little road was a two way road! It was in between trees and wasn't level, it was kind of scary! But, then again, the trees were beautiful! After the mystery spot it was time for our next adventure!