After our alpine adventures, the 2025-2026 academic year was filled with a bunch of more low key adventures. Work at UCSC continues for me, while Jess continues to rebe busy with organizing UC faculty. We’re also both enjoying our now bustling house with a constant swirl of cat activity around us. It turns out that three cats is more than one. It’s even more than two. Math is funny like that. But they are super-cute. Here they are on April 7th, 2026, as I finally get around to writing about the fall of 2025…
…and by writing, I mean more like meandering through some note-taking over the course of a month. My apologies if this isn’t as targeted as some of my other posts. But, if nothing else, it chronicles a bunch of the people I’ve seen and places I’ve been in the past 9 months.
So, moving on…
The fall kicked off with John and Annie Rose coming up from LA for a visit. We enjoyed Santa Cruzing with them, eating a variety of breakfast sandwiches/burritos (which are really the best things to eat in Santa Cruz) and wandering the woods.
We celebrated Annie Rose’s birthday with the best gift ever…I got two new kittens! I had been joking since they arrived that we should go get her a kitten for her birthday (she loves cats too). So, when we went out to buy a cake, I told AR and John that I had another errand I needed to run. I then pulled up to the shelter and told them I was going to get a couple of new kittens. John was worried that I was doing this without approval from Jessica, but I eventually convinced him it was OK. (Jessica and I had already picked them out the previous weekend.) So, besides playing in the woods, AR also spent a lot of the weekend playing with the new kittens.
I already posted pictures of them from that first weekend here.
They’ve continued to grow. Tornado follows me everywhere and likes to play fetch. Tumbleweed is a little less frenetically loving, but he is incredibly soft and will allow hours of non-stop belly rubs. Quicksand is still a little skeptical, but does seem to like to snuggle with Tumbleweed quite a bit.
Later in October, Mark and Sue came to visit Santa Cruz. We did some Santa Cruzing with them as well, played games and got lost in the woods. We spent the weekend seeing a bunch of artists during Open Studios one day and then visiting a number of farms as part of the Open Farms tour the next. Both were fun activities and a nice way to get out of the house.
Our favorite studio was the home of a woman who made mosaics of all sorts. Her driveway was awesome in itself, but the best was her little studio room with racks of plates ready to be smashed. And Flip Flop Farms definitely had the best location, with everything from carrots to kale dangling from cliffs above the coast.
I’ve also been up to some Santa Cruzing on my own from time to time. I try to wander the UCSC campus most days at lunch, and sometimes wander various paths either on the way to or from work. And West Cliff is always nearby.
On campus, I continue to enjoy the wildlife as well, with everything from banana slugs to deer, turkey, and coyotes crossing my paths on a frequent basis.
I try to remember that there’s at least some pretty things in the world, even if society is collapsing around us. Santa Cruz is a good spot for that.
Another escape has been music. I finally decided to pay for a streaming service, so occasionally I’m using that to listen to some new things. I also enjoy the occasional live show. One fun concert recently in Santa Cruz was the New Mastersounds…
I got another dose of jazz when Jessica attended an anthropology conference in New Orleans. While she hung out with a bunch of academics, I was holed up in the hotel working. But on the weekend, we wandered the city and escaped the heat by ducking into some of the free shows along Frenchman Street. In particular, the free afternoon gigs at Snug Harbor were both pretty high quality.
Just down the street, we also sat in on a very fun show at DBA. There we saw Deuce Brown, the high school-aged kid from a musical family, with his band of other high school and college students. They weren’t as tight as some of the others (above), but they were quite fun. The best part was the audience participation with grandma and her friends dancing by the bar, and others literally passing the hat around to get tips for the band.
This was our first time in New Orleans since the summer of 2004, so it was nice to see the city a bit as an adult. We did two great walking tours, the first focusing on architecture in the Garden District where we saw quite a variety of places and learned all about the different uses of wrought and cast iron.
Our second tour focused on the Black history and jazz in New Orleans. We spent time wandering Louis Armstrong Park (which had great statues honoring a number of important musical legends) and then meandered through the Treme neighborhood.
But, mostly we just wandered on our own, ate well, and enjoyed the uniqueness of this place.
Oh, and one more note on New Orleans. This, here, is genius. Why don’t more places put street names down here in a convenient place for pedestrians?
From New Orleans, we followed the Mississippi north to St. Louis, where we spent Thanksgiving with my family. We had fun doing the same ole, same ole — playing games, eating well (go to Corner 17 if you’re ever in St. Louis), and visiting the “Garden Glow” at the Botanical Gardens. It was chill (and chilly, especially after New Orleans!), but nice to spend time with some particularly sweet people. (Not pictured: photographer Darlene.)
In December we got into the holiday spirit, helping decorate a tree with Brian and Sacha…
…and out of the holiday spirit singing along at “Fuck That! Erin McKeown’s Anti-Holiday Spectacular.”
The show was actually really fun. Erin McKeown is a very tiny woman and a very smart singer-songwriter. The show came complete with a “hymnal” of songs, some of which are bastardized versions of classic Christmas songs and others are her own originals celebrating queer love and trashing traditions. The best…
All that, above, was the lead-up to this off-season’s real adventure: Spain. If you don’t know, Jessica’s sister, Emily, and her whole family moved to Madrid last summer. So, this year, Christmas was spent in Spain. This was our first time going there (though we saw it in the distance on sabbatical when we went hiking in the Pyrenees with Claire). In some ways, though, a lot of our travels prepared us for this. We’ve spent a bunch of time in South America and Mexico, and all our fall trips were in former Spanish territory — while both New Orleans and St. Louis are famous for their French history and for being part of the Louisiana Purchase, that whole region was controlled by Spain for most of the late 18th century. Not to mention that we live in California. So, really, most of our adult lives we’ve been bopping around the edges of the old Spanish Empire, but this was our first trip back to the old colonial beast itself!
And it was an interesting trip. A real mix. Partly, it was just a normal Taft/Papile family Christmas — a lot of hanging around, playing games, staring at phones (believe it or not, we’re not always doing something exciting), cooking, eating, walking around, etc…
But, it was also totally different because we were in Spain! And the Papiles were only sort-of tourists, having been there for half a year already.
They showed us around Madrid for a few days. It was interesting to see the city, but to see it through their eyes. I hadn’t looked up anything about things I might want to do or see because, in a group of eight, I was just ready to go with the flow. So, we went to places Emily, Jay, and the boys thought were interesting, pretty, worth seeing, or personally relevant. They weren’t necessarily the places I would have gone, but they also weren’t not those places — I just kind of let the experience wash over me rather than being an active participant in the guiding of the experience. It was just…different.
Regardless, we had a lot of fun in Madrid. We saw some beautiful architectural creations, cityscapes, palaces, squares, and alleys, all of which which reminded me that Spain was really part of Europe (while my mind tends to associate the Spanish language with Latin America).
As you can see, everything was decked out for Christmas. There are lights everywhere in the downtown areas. So, we went on a silly double-decker tour bus to see them…
We also ran across a pack of Santas on motorcycles…
While this video is about 20 seconds, the whole group took about ten minutes to pass us by. There were a lot of biker-Santas.
We also ran into a pack of (non-motorized) bicycling and roller-skating Santas later that day.
Even more Santas raced in a 5k the next day. Some of them were even a bunch of Papiles. That was a truly hilarious event. The sponsors sent everyone Santa costumes. A few intrepid people even had packs of reindeer runners pulling them along. And Connor had a ridiculous elf costume too.
And, in the same spirit of fun, but less Christmas-y, one of the most amusing sights was the “silent disco” with a group of people dancing through town together wearing headphones.
We also ate well across the city, munching at one tapas place after another (ranging from neighborhood favorites to high end celebratory spots), as well as getting some crazy churro-ice cream desserts…
After a few days together, the Papiles took off for the southern coast, while Mark, Sue, Jessica and I stayed one more day in Madrid, spending a good chunk of it at the Reina Sofia, an impressive modern art museum.
We spent a long time in one of the special exhibitions, a thorough look at the enormous variety of works by Maruja Mallo. I have to admit this was not an artist I was familiar with, but I was pretty blown away by the range from works that looked like M.C. Escher or Xul Solar sketches to vaguely O’Keefe-esque alien plants to feminist-communist-inspired paintings. I didn’t love all of it, but I really liked quite a lot.
One of the coolest rooms in this exhibit included a series of graph-paper exercises where Mallo was working out various color and spatial relationships. The sheer tediousness of it reminded me of the spreadsheets I make when creating board games. But the sprawling artistic output that came from these surrounded us, something my games have yet to achieve.
Elsewhere, we saw a beautiful exhibit of paintings by Juan Usle, each made of millions of tiny brushstrokes combining to create vast patterns.
We, of course, pushed briefly through the crowd surrounding Picasso’s Guernica.
And one of the least-inspiring, but also funniest exhibits was a room of large metal slabs created by Richard Serra (who has some more interesting works in St. Louis, in my opinion). Rather than repeating the story that made this a worthwhile stop, I’ll simply post it here. Read on.
The next day, Mark, Sue, Jessica, and I took the train down to Sevilla, where we rented a car and drove to Chiclana de la Frontera, a small city on the southern coast of Spain, just southeast of Cadiz, just a bit northwest of the Strait of Gibraltar. We spent the next several days in the area, wandering, eating well, Christmas-ing, and enjoying a very different atmosphere from that of Madrid.
It was fascinating how different this area felt from Madrid. Partly, it was just a smaller city and drifted into rural-ness quite quickly. But, also the architecture and style of the area was just different. While Madrid reminded me that Spain was very much part of Europe, Chiclana reminded me that Spain is very much connected to Latin America. It felt like a bridge between those two continents. I mean, we were clearly in Europe, but all sorts of things from the low-walled enclosures of private homes to the stucco and stonework of the commercial districts felt just a little closer to what I’ve seen in Lima, Quito, D.F. or other Latin American cities. Maybe it was also just that the general level of wealth was lower than Madrid, a little closer to the middle class districts of Lima than the wealthy center of Madrid. But the look of the area just made it really obvious that many Latin American styles were adopted from Spain, and perhaps that there was some flow of ideas in the reverse as well. Regardless, it was interesting to be able to really feel that connection from the coast of Spain to the coast of Peru.
Probably my favorite day of the trip, we drove to one of the nearby “white towns” (sounds more racist than it is, I hope?), Vejer de la Frontera. This place was simply a treat to wander around. White walled buildings built on the sides of a couple of hills, the highest point contained behind medieval castle walls.
Narrow alleys, stairways, endless places to explore. Cars having to do ridiculous things just to turn a corner (inside the castle walls especially). Municipal marmalade oranges (they are tart and not for public picking). And a plethora of cats.
To be honest, I think Spain has the highest proportion of street cats of anywhere I’ve been. If Jess enjoyed the food more, it might be the preferred destination over Italy just for that. (But Italian food still wins.) Anyhow, Vejer de la Frontera was pretty awesome.
From Vejer, we went to Barbate, a coastal town from which we could barely see Morocco.
We also spent a fun morning poking around Cadiz. That’s a gorgeous town. It’s built on a tiny spit of land sticking out into the Atlantic, and, as we learned, has some seriously ancient roots. It was first established by Phoenician settlers around 1000 BCE-ish, and later conquered and built over by the Romans. We toured a little archaeological site and wandered around a bit, but it was unfortunately rainy, so we didn’t spend as much time there as I’d hoped we might.
Our last day in Spain was spent in Sevilla. The whole crew took the trip there, but Mark, Sue, Jessica, and I ended by taking the train to the airport in Madrid, while Emily, Jay, and the boys headed back to Chiclana where some friends were coming to meet them. Regardless of the impending end of the family vacation, Sevilla was a gorgeous stop. A bit overrun with tourists, but who can blame us? Not only was it a beautiful city, but the weather was perfect too and despite not having a ton of time, we still got to wander quite a bit of the historic center of the city.
The prettiest spot was definitely the Plaza de España. It was built for a World’s Fair in the 1920s and features gorgeous tile and stonework around a half-moon building with the flat expanse in the middle broken up with soothing waterways. Absolutely stunning place. And you can see it was a beautiful day out as well. We picked the right time to head here.
Of course, they couldn’t make it all just lovely, could they? There were tiled benches celebrating various aspects of the Reconquista, and busts of famous Spaniards, including Pizarro, Cortes, and the like. In a nearby park, a monument was dedicated to Columbus. Not to deny that these folks were important in the history of Spain and the rest of the world, but the lack of notation about their problematic histories is…problematic?
One of my other favorite spots was here, the Setas de Sevilla (Mushrooms of Seville?). The path we took in and out of the old city passed this very-clearly-not-old plaza…
I liked it. A distinctly not-fussy, very playful, very contemporary piece of public architecture in the middle of a historic city. Well done, Spain.
One last note from Sevilla: on the way to the train station, we stopped at a cafe for dessert. My slice of Roscon de Reyes was a winner — I almost broke a tooth on a king!
So, that was Spain! I was glad to finally get there, and excited that we’ll have an excuse to go back again sooner rather than later. And it was a fun adventure. But with the whole entourage, less intense “travel” and “touristing” (I know, not a word, but just, less of that!), and more time chilling with the fam. All good. Excited for the next visit.
But, oh, no, we weren’t done with that trip. We had one stop outside of former Spanish territory before heading back to California…Atlanta. (Well, there were some Spanish missions in Georgia in the 17th century, but that barely counts.) Our annual New Year’s gathering was generously hosted by Scott and Jess (Davis) at their amazing home in the Atlanta suburbs. And, fortunately, this year, everyone was there: Jessica and I, Scott, Jess, and their kids Lucy and Bryan, Sam, Katie, and their kids Simon, Max, and Audrey, and Ira, Ruth, and their kids Sam and Sara. Yes, two Jessicas and two Sams. It could get confusing at times.
I swear this gathering gets better every year. The kids are all awesome people (as are the adults). This year it was fun getting to play more serious games with more of the youngins, but also equally cool that they were able to just run off and entertain and look after themselves, so the amount of adult-only time was great as well. A new kids-only favorite was “That’s Not a Hat” (which is already a ridiculous game featuring face-down cards that are easily forgotten), but with the added element of a peanut gallery under the glass table shouting random things at the players.
We were also blown away by the creativity and simultaneous seriousness and ridiculousness of Bryan’s Pizzaball League. We were introduced to Pizzaball two years ago when we visited previously (image on the right). It is a version of baseball played on a small flat patch in the Davis’s otherwise hilly backyard and involves a wiffleball bat and a pizza-shaped squashmallow. In the past two years, Bryan has professionalized the sport. There are multiple three-player teams in a league with jerseys, schedules, umps, etc. They meet in the Davis backyard every weekend. It’s amazing and hilarious at the same time.
Additional highlights of the few days we spent together included…
Great Food, including classics like Simon’s chocolate bears and the Sam-led sushi extravaganza, but also some amazing zhajiang mian (chinese noodles) from Jessica Davis.
Great Friends, hiking, sparkling, marshmallow roasting, and generally just hanging out.
And So Many Games, from 10 minute plays of light favorites to too many hours spent playtesting one of my broken prototypes. Word games, dice games, group games, one-on-one games, thinky games, all-ages games, silly games, serious games, literally everyone playing games. Even some backyard golfing with a special guest visit from Alex (Ira’s brother). Overall, just So. Many. Games.
Now, let’s be honest. This already epic post should just end here. We went back to California after visiting Spain (and Atlanta). The end. But, I have a few other visits and such I want recorded for posterity, but they aren’t really full-post-worthy, so they are getting the tacked-on-the-end-here treatment.
With that said, let’s raise a glass to fun that was had in winter and spring 2026…
We had another quick visit with John and Annie Rose, this time in LA. As always, their beautiful cat, Kona, threatened to maul me if I got too close (but I did anyway).
My parents then came to Santa Cruz for a quick visit. There was much classic Santa Cruzing along West Cliff, in the redwoods, and at the farmer’s market. A new adventure was taking the Roaring Camp railroad up Bear Mountain.
We then met my parents again the following weekend, but this time in La Quinta/Palm Springs. My aunt, Francine, cousin Barton, and his wife, Karen were all there for about a month, so it was a good chance to catch up with them. We also got to see my mom’s cousin, Jim, and his partner, Randy, at the new place they just bought in Palm Springs.
Jess and I took a hike around West Borrego Butte in Anza Borrego, and then met my parents to check out the wildflowers blooming in the desert. Not my favorite desert, but still very cool.
After driving all the way back home on that Monday, President’s Day, Jessica and I did a stupid thing and drove up to San Francisco the next evening after work to go to a show. Suzanne Vega put on a great performance, as always. This is a chunk of my favorite song off her newest album…
A week later, we took another great hike at an unexpected place, Coyote Reservoir outside Gilroy. We met Mo and Beaudry there and dragged Tephra (yes, she has the same name as our deceased cat) and one of her friends on long and beautiful hike through the hills.
Our biggest adventure of the spring was a last-minute thrown together plan. I had been planning to suggest to Jess that we take a long weekend around her spring break to go to Utah to do some hiking, when her parents called and asked about visiting us right around then. So, we decided to meet up with them in Utah. And then, they asked about inviting Nancy (Sue’s sister) and Mike (her husband) to join us, so, in the end, six of us met up for a long weekend in Kanab.
Driving there from Vegas, Jessica and I made an awesome stop at a place I definitely want to go back to…just with a dry bag next time. We hiked Red Reef Canyon, outside of Hurricane. This place is freakin’ gorgeous and has a great little stream running through it. As you ascend, you have to climb a series of steps cut into the rock to get past the first little waterfall. From there, the canyon splits. First we went up the narrow left side and came out to a great view. Then, we followed the stream up the right canyon. Quickly, it became too deep to bring our packs, the camera, etc. We swam up a 3 foot wide slot for a bit, but eventually decided we needed to turn back to get to Kanab in time for dinner. Definitely a place we need to go back to.
The next day, I took the Taft/Smith clan out for a hike without Jess (who had work to do…boring!). We hiked Wire Pass, a slot canyon into where it intersects Buckskin Gulch. (Buckskin Gulch eventually meets the Paria River, forming the longest slot canyon in the world — usually a 3 day trip, one I hope to do someday.) Needless to say, it was beautiful. I had been here once before, but like a decade ago, so it was well worth going back to. After lunch in Page, AZ, we gave up on going to Antelope Canyon, since it now costs about $100 per person, and instead took a quick jaunt over to Horseshoe Bend, where the Colorado River makes a big curve just below Glen Canyon Dam, before heading home.
The next day, we visited the Mansard Petroglyphs, which I had hiked to two years ago. A nice hike and some amazing history, but not something I need to do on an annual basis. Still, it was nice to get out in the desert on a beautiful day and we really enjoyed the wildflowers along the way as well.
The reason we did such a short hike that day was because we had to spend the morning…picking up the passes we won in the lottery! Sadly, once again, I did not win tickets to go to North Coyote Buttes, home to the famous “Wave.” But I did win tickets for South Coyote Buttes once again, and was excited to head off into the wilderness with the whole family.
On my previous trip, I made some new Italian friends (who we saw last summer, and will see, hopefully, again this summer). This time, I got to spend time with Jessica’s aunt and uncle, who I hadn’t spent quite so much quality time with previously. It was fun. They’re crazy energetic explorers, and we have tons of overlapping interests with them, but they also have a very different worldview than Jess and I, so it was interesting getting to know them a bit better.
You can see, below that we saw some new areas and hit some of the same places I’d visited previously. There are no trails here, so it’s all left up to your own imagination and route-finding. The dark red line shows the 2026 route, while the light pink shows the trip I took in 2024.
As with the previous visit, it was incredibly beautiful. The shapes and colors of the desert are more spectacular here than pretty much anywhere else I’ve seen. No slot canyons, but just completely fascinating swirls and patterns. And there is a “wave” here too, as you can see the Tafts demonstrating.
Anyhow, I won’t belabor all of it again. Go read the 2024 post. It’s just a special place. Go if you can. Enjoy these photos if you can’t.
We took one more short hike around Kanab with Sue and Mark before departing. As always, I can’t wait to get back to Utah again soon.
I’ll wrap this up with one last thing. My birthday cherries came early this year. Usually I try to go cherry picking on my birthday weekend, but by the time we went on Mother’s Day (thus less friends than usual with us, sadly), it was already past prime harvest time. Regardless, the cherries we picked were absolutely delicious. 33 pounds this year. That means 4 gallon-sized bags of pitted cherries in the freezer and a couple of large bowls we’ve been plowing through this past week. So good. Thanks to Mo and Lori for joining us!
Until the next adventure comes…