Stayed overnight at Helios Creed's mobile home in Aptos (next to Santa Cruz). I got coffee and Helios got hot chocolate and we walked a block or so down to the beach. What I saw zapped me completely. Overcast morning, pier, and the most gigantic dead boat I've ever seen.
The S.S. Palo Alto was built at the Oakland shipyard in 1918, intended for military use in WWI.
The war ended before any such usage occurred , so the Palo Alto was sold to the Seacliff Amusement Company of Nevada and towed in 1929 to what would become Seacliff State Beach. Onboard was a casino, arcade, restaurant for the finest in dining & dancing and even a swimming pool. But alas. the great depression caused the Seacliff Amusement Company to go bankrupt and leave the ship to rust and rot at the Aptos pier.
A park ranger happened to drive up while we were there and unlocked the gate to the pier. We precariously walked over the ancient wooden planks to the ship.
Believe me, that boat is creepy and I wanted to walk back to the beach as quickly as possible. However the pier seemed untrustworthy. The boat and rickety pier filled me with a sense of dread like never before. Both a feeling of death on the boat and the pier feeling really rickety and unsafe. Visions of hypothermia from an unplanned early morning swim.
