Palm Trees along Cabrillo Blvd

January 27, 2004 - Palm Trees Along Cabrillo Blvd.

There are two palm trees on the edhat.com banner. Of course, the palm trees represent Santa Barbara, a town with many of these trees. The dedicated staff of edhat.com wondered just how many palms there were in the city, especially along Cabrillo Blvd.

So, on Monday the dedicated staff of edhat.com woke up early and joined the morning crowd on the bike path along Santa Barbara’s fabled shore. We even took some of our relatives with us who were enticed by the sunshine and fresh ocean air. The dedicated staff and family armed with tally counters and keen eyes walked down the path looking up into the sky, counting palm trees. Along the way we smiled and said hi to all the walkers, joggers, and skaters who paraded up and down the coastline beside us. Some of them said hi back.

We anticipated our journey to be a walk in the park. We were only patrolling the beach side of the street. And, the palm trees would be lined up in neat and stately rows like parking meters. All we had to do was click them off one at a time as we passed. Oops. It did not take long for the reality to sink in. The palms by the beach do not have order. They are here and there and everywhere … in clumps and in groves, in groups and in forests. The task at hand of counting them all seemed as overwhelming as counting the planks on the wharf, the cracks in the bike path, blades of grass, grains of sand … you get the point. It was going to be a long morning.

green area shows area we surveyed

The relatives bailed early … they turned back at the wharf. The rest of the dedicated staff carried on - dizzy from looking up at hundreds of seemingly identical trees. We are sure that, just like snowflakes, no two palm trees are exactly alike. But at the end of our two-hour walk, it was even getting hard to distinguish palm trees from street lamps.

The only break we got on our journey was at the very end, just as we passed the East Beach parking lot and strolled over by the volleyball courts. In case you haven't noticed, the trees there magically change species - the palms disappear and are replaced by pines.

When it was said and done, we had counted 1299 palm trees along the roughly 3-mile stretch of beach. That’s about 1 tree for every 4 feet of waterfront! The contestants in the daily contest all guessed way too low on this one - the average guess was 302. The person with the edhat handle Marty guessed the highest number (726). Of course Marty knows the best. She is Marty Blum, the Mayor of Santa Barbara! But today she is not only the mayor, she is also the winner of the edhat.com daily contest and the owner of a Peet’s coffee card.

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