Southern California Vol. 24 - Bigfoot Discovery Museum

Last week, I showed you a really cool museum of antique penny arcade machines in San Francisco (Musée Mécanique).  If you’re going to be up that way and are really into the unusual stuff or even just want to pretend you’re in the movie The Lost Boys, you may find yourself visiting Santa Cruz.  

There, you can visit the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk featured at the beginning of that film.  Who knows? Maybe you'll even see some muscle dude playing a saxophone to that song by The Call.  If that's you're plan, do it on Saturday and on Sunday, take a relaxing drive and check out the Bigfoot Discovery Museum.

Look, I’m not about to argue with anyone about whether Bigfoot is real or not.  Whether you think it’s been debunked by all the Finding Bigfoot shows or not, I can tell you that plenty of people have seen something they can’t identify.  For just one afternoon, pretend there’s still a possibility that a large mysterious animal is roaming the Northern California wilderness.

The museum is only two rooms but it’s arranged into three different “areas”.  The first deals with the bigfoot from myths and legends going back centuries.  Here you'll find native american accounts and early sightings.  The second area focuses on more modern eyewitness accounts and physical evidence.  You'll see plaster casts and photos as well as that famous piece of film footage by Patterson and Gimlin.

The final area will please all of you Six-Million Dollar Man fans out there as it focuses on the Paranormal Bigfoot.  That area features displays about the possibility that Bigfoot is an alien, possesses supernatural powers and/or can move between dimensions.  That’s some pretty wild stuff compared to just figuring we’ve got a cryptid animal running around our forests.

As I mentioned above, the museum is pretty small and if you’re not going to actually read the accounts posted along with the casts of footprints, then you can easily do it in a half hour.  Still, it’s worth seeing just to get that sense that there may be something out there.  The owner is famously friendly and approachable and will be glad to tell you about his own experience seeing a sasquatch at the age of five. 

Since you’ll be driving through some of the most gorgeous scenery on Earth as you make your way down the coast by Santa Cruz, you should take a moment to park, hike out to a tree and read a few chapters of a good book.  I’d suggest The Wash which can be purchased from my Amazon Author’s page.

See you next week!