Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz needs 1 day: riding the Giant Dipper roller coaster at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the only oceanfront amusement park on the US West Coast with free admission (rides are paid separately), on one, and touring the municipal wharf to see sea lions in their natural habitat, the same day. June-September brings the most stable weather, though morning fog is common year-round. It's mid-priced for California. Its Giant Dipper, a 1924 wooden roller coaster declared a National Historic Landmark, is still running almost a hundred years later, and the city is considered the birthplace of surfing in the Americas, with the first boards brought by Hawaiians in 1885.