Good morning and greeting, July fans. Ah, the good old summertime when the days are long, the nights are warm and the Yankees are back in the pennant race. Growing up in newest of Jerseys, fireflies would make their appearance on summer nights, lighting up the skies with nature’s wonderment. In California all I see are mosquitoes with tiny flashlights. It’s just not the same.

We just returned from a weekend visiting my favorite middle brother and his family in Marin County. The ride along Highway 1, or the Great Pacific Highway and over the Golden Gate Bridge was as lovely as a Venus Williams’ passing shot. The cloudless blue skies gave the Pacific Ocean a turquoise-aqua kind of look and that works for me because I’m an Aqua Velva man. My daughter remarked it looked like Hawaii with kelp. Usually on this merry ride north we will at least see some fog as we hit the Sunset District of San Francisco but Saturday was smooth sailing. The 45 minute ride up the coast from Santa Cruz to Half Moon Bay definitely ranks as one of the beautiful in California. Not Big Sur beautiful but close.

The return trip was a little different because as soon as we hopped on Highway 101 in Marin we could see a fog bank the size of Haystacks Calhoun. As we crossed San Francisco’s most famous landmark the fog was so thick that we couldn’t see the second tower of the Golden Gate until it was right upon us. The fog and gray skies stayed with us all the way down the coast till we hit Waddell Creek and the Santa Cruz county line. Then all of a sudden, before you could say. “What happened to Phil ‘We’ve become a nation of whiners’ Graham,” the skies opened up and it was sunny and blue the rest of the way. The weather around this great country of ours is so diverse, and today I got a little reminder of the magic.

Moving along, before Sunrise Santa Cruz goes on hiatus for a couple of weeks, we are once again going back to the basics and featuring a week of sunrises. Today’s is from a storming Monday from a few December’s back where the skies were dark and the waves were huge (photo #3) as the swell battered the coastline as daylight hit the beach. I called this series “Blue Thunder” as the Allman Brothers beat me to “Stormy Monday.”

That’s all she wrote for today. On Wednesday we’ll journey down to southern California and show you some color in the desert sky. We’ll also discuss a smoking hot topic so stay tuned to this cyber station. So enjoy the sky, enjoy the day and we’ll catch you on the rebound. Later, Olympic softball fans.