California

After the river trip we spent one more night camping at Lake Mead.  In the morning we decided that we had enough of the desert and pointed the van west towards California.  We had plans to bypass Los Angeles and hit the coast at Ventura.

Once in Ventura we drove to the Channel Islands National Park visitors center.  We got some information on the islands and then headed over to buy tickets for the boat ride across.  For those of you that don't know what the Channel Islands are this is the link to the park site: 

http://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm

The islands became a national park, quite recently actually, in 1980.  The park consists of four islands spread out roughly east to west and one island located much further to the south.  The main four islands are about an hour and a half boat ride from Ventura.  We decided to take the boat over to Santa Cruz and hike around for the day.

The morning of our departure was socked in with a damp, pea soup fog.  We shouldered our packs and headed for the boat.  Of course once aboard we let all the tourists fight for spots on the bow while we avoided the masses and sat down in the back of the boat behind the cabin.  I've been on enough boats in thick fog to know that one gets soaked riding at the bow...  The boat ride was very enjoyable from the stern and we stopped to see a large pod of dolphins and another time to see a Minke whale.

We arrived at the island and unloaded, the resident ranger gave a quick talk about what not to do and we were off.  The first two hours of our walk was very fogged in, but it kept the temperatures at a reasonable level.  We hiked out of the island interior up to the cliffs on the coast and listened to the Sea Lions barking from below.  Since we couldn't see much of anything we sat down and caught up on some reading, hoping the fog would disipate.

Santa Cruz was very similar to Monhegan Island in Maine.  The high rocky cliffs, the very different micro climates throughout the island and all around is nothing but the ocean.  We walked the cliffs for the rest of the morning and finally just before lunch the sun started to break through the fog and we got some decent views of our surroundings.

We headed back down to the picnic area for some beef jerky and trial mix.  I found the most interesting part of the island right next to the picnic tables actually.  Since everything that comes to the island has to be brought by boat, and removal requires the same, all of the original farm equipment is still on the island.  It has all been moved to the main visitors area and a brief description has been written about each item.  Since the islands have been populated by "westerners" since the early 1900s there were all sorts of cool stuff.

Two tractors, both from the 1910s, were mostly intact.  Old cement mixers, hay bailers, homemade saw mills were just some of the equipment slowly rusting into the landscape.  The details of how each was used were included in the descriptions including how well, or not well, the men working on the farm favored the particular piece...  It was interesting stuff.

After lunch we once again climbed out of the interior to the opposite side of the harbor and found a nice place to sit and enjoy the sun while we waited for our ride.

Once back on the mainland we poached a parking spot at a sketchy motel for the night.  In the morning we headed up the coast on 101.