UC Santa Cruz visit has an outdoorsy twist

As 10 eyes peered down into the dark opening, we felt our bravery quotient take a severe hit.

"Uh, I'm not going down there," said one of the four teenage boys with me on this trip, which was designed to combine beach camping with a visit to a college campus.

Until now, the three-day trip had been all fun and games -- goofing around on the sand, doing crossword puzzles, telling stupid jokes.

But as we stared at the muddy steel ladder that descended into the mouth of Empire Cave on the outskirts of the heavily forested UC Santa Cruz campus, a sense of real adventure -- and panic -- took hold.

It was decision time.

After mulling the options, one of my sons broke the silence: "I'm going in."

In true Musketeer form, we followed one by one until the five of us stood at the bottom staring up at the hole of natural light from which we had climbed down. Now what?

Before any of us could admit that maybe we had gone about as far as we really wanted, fate intervened: Our lone flashlight flickered and then dimmed to a barely visible amber.

We climbed out of the marble cavern and trudged up the trail that snaked its way back to the university, where just an hour before we had been but another group of prospective Banana Slugs, being given the official campus tour.

Wearing an extra layer of filth from our spelunking foray, we headed south 20 miles to the Manresa Uplands Campground at Manresa State Beach, which acted as our headquarters.

Manresa, a hike-in, tent-only facility on gently sloping bluffs that overlook Monterey Bay, has the look and feel of a nature preserve. Looking down from the parking lot, one would be hard-pressed to even notice the picnic tables and fire rings that mark its 64 spots.

Campers pitch their tents in the wild grasses and are surrounded by orange and purple petals of burgeoning wildflowers. Of course, the average teenager has little appreciation for such things, and my band was no different. It was the camping itself -- not the location -- that interested them.

When we arrived on a sunny midweek afternoon, the campground was deserted, which only added to its natural allure.The beach was cool, crisp and uncrowded, and the teenagers drew pictures and concocted word games in the silty smooth sand.

At night, the kids' attention turned to campfire building ("Is the tepee style most effective?") and marshmallow roasting. ("Why does it take so long to get one golden brown but only an instant to turn one pitch black?")

As the kids reminisced about the trip's highlights, I felt guilty about serving them hot dogs for the second time in three nights. After all, they're not in college -- yet.