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Its Monarch season!


It's Monarch season!


Monarch - A beautiful milkweed butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. These are simple yet so beautiful butterflies that migrate to California and can be seen in Oct through Nov...

They travel at a speed of 25 miles/hour and can go upto a height of 10,000feet(Woah!).

These butterflies make Natural Bridges State beach natural preserve area their home from Oct through Nov. The park ranger have weekend free-1 hour tours at 11am and 2pm. These are great tours, they give you lot of information and are very kid friendly. The rangers were so friendly and make the whole tour so kid oriented with butterfly costumes and Q&A.

You can then follow the trail and visit the preserve and watch butterflies. 

Trail leading up to the area for butterfly watching
They have some binoculars setup that can help you see the pods. (The picture isn't all that great but observe the butterflies hanging on the milkweed leaves. They look like dried leaves on the tree but they are monarch butterflies.)

Watching the butterflies on the milkweed plant 





We then went to the Natural State Bridges Beach and enjoyed nice sunny California day! 

You can make it a day trip with some butterfly viewing + Beach day with picnic lunch!
The beach doesn't have any shade so you may wanna take a tent or something. 


 OR Santacruz downtown is very close and you can choose to have nice fancy lunch at a near by restaurant. We went to the Laila, a contemporary Mediterranean place.




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