Wilderness Wandering

The sea once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

Jacques Cousteau

We left Joshua Tree National Park after a great morning hike. We stopped in the small town of Joshua Tree and did laundry then we headed west toward Los Angeles. We broke our Cracker Barrel camping virginity by pulling into The Cracker Barrel in Rialto, CA. We went in and got some appetizers and ate in the van and went to sleep. The Cracker Barrel was right along the 303, a very busy interstate, but we did sleep OK. 

We went into Cracker Barrel as it opened at 7 AM and had breakfast and got on the road. Being a Saturday, we were hoping the LA traffic would be light and it was. 😁

I had reserved a camp site at a Ventura County park called Foster Red Mountain Campground. Check in was noon and we arrived at 10 AM. So we went for a nice walk on a bike trail. As we were setting up camp, Tim was getting some water and started talking with a cyclist who stopped for water. What an interesting guy! Ryan lives in Homer, Alaska 6 months of the year and Ventura the other 6 months. He had a cool Trek bike, which is how their conversation started. He told us how his sister has a similar van to ours and how she had recently camped right on the ocean. I decided to look into that option since we did not have a place reserved for the next night. 

After lunch, we decided to go find The Channel Islands Visitor Center to take our picture and stamp our passport. It was a great VC. They had a recreated tidal pool that was fun to check out. 

There are 8 Channel Islands. Five of them are part of the National Park. Santa Cruz, our destination tomorrow is the largest island at 22 miles long and between 2 and 6 miles wide. The island has many sea caves. We will be Sea Kayaking there tomorrow as long as the weather cooperates. 

I looked into parks with camping right on the beach. Several were closed because they had sustained major damage from the terrible storms they had in December. But I found a spot at Rincon Parkway. We decided to drive down and check it out. As we pulled up to the site we have reserved for tomorrow, which has a stunning view, we saw Ryan riding his bike! He stopped and was happy to hear we had gotten a spot!

Next on our agenda was a trip into Ventura. We wanted to see a bit of the city, and get gas and a few grocery items. We also decided to see if we could find a Saturday night church service. The only Saturday night one I found was at Mission Basilica San Buenaventura. What a history that church has!! It was the 9th and last of the missions established in CA by Father Junipero Serra! It was established in 1782!

We enjoyed the service. We got back to camp and enjoyed dinner and the full moon by the campfire!

Up early on Sunday to mostly sunny skies, we were a “go” for our excursion.  We broke camp and drove to the Ventura harbor to board Island Packers Cruises boat to Santa Cruz Island. Island Packers are the concessionaire for the NPS and the Channel Islands. We hoped to see whales and dolphins on our way to the park, but alas, were disappointed. 

We docked and headed to our sea kayaking excursion. There were four couples with our tour guide Marc. Island Packers had wet suits and nice wind breakers we could wear if we wanted. I said “ Yes, please!” We also had to wear helmets and floatation devices. After a short lesson on handy strokes and safety precautions, we carried our kayaks to the beach and set off. 

We paddled a short distance and Marc went in to the cave to assess the conditions and then came back out and instructed us how to approach the cave. Since the sea is constantly changing, Marc warned us that it could be pretty calm when we entered and get rougher before we exited and to just wait in the cave a little while if that happened. He did that for each cave. Marc also shared a good amount of information about the native plants and animals, the Chumash Indians who used to live here, and the geology of the islands. We kayaked and explored for about 3 hours. You head one direction first and then circle back across the launch area in case you’ve had enough and want to stop, and then continue the other direction for the balance of the tour. We did about 5 caves and they were all different and extremely cool! We saw a bald eagle, many brown pelicans, seagulls, bright orange garibaldi fish, beautiful beds of sea kelp and a 3 second glimpse of a sea lion’s head in the distance. 

We had time for a quick 2 mile hike on  Cavern Point Loop. We saw some stunning views and also got a glimpse of several of the adorable Island foxes. We returned to the dock and boarded for our return. We didn’t have any better luck seeing marine wildlife on the way back. But, the day was still a huge success. 

We hurried back to our ocean front site for the night and enjoyed a phenomenal sunset and opened the windows to fall asleep listening to the surf. It was an excellent day.