Parks Parks and Parks: Day 15

Today we got up bright and early to drive to Ventura Harbor for our boat ride to the Santa Cruz Island of the Channel Islands. The Channel Islands are an archipelago of eight islands, and five of them make up Channel Islands National Park. Santa Cruz is the largest of the five islands and is 22 miles long and 2-6 miles wide. We took an hour and a half boat ride to the shore of Santa Cruz. It was a fairly smooth ride, and, about an hour in, we saw a bunch of dolphins swimming alongside the boat! Since we were spending the night on the island, we had to prepare our gear and food in advance and be able to carry it a mile to our campsite. When we docked, we received our gear that was stored below the deck, received a short orientation from the park ranger, Bethany, and then we were on our merry way.

We lugged our gear to our campsite, which wasn't too bad except for the heat. Thankfully, we had the first campsite along the loop and it was the largest and shadiest! Planning ahead really pays off! We set up camp and were greeted by the local natives, the island foxes. The island fox is native and unique to the Channel Islands. They are only found on 6 of the 8 Channel Islands and nowhere else in the world. The island fox is smaller than a normal fox and is about the size of a house cat. These animals have become accustomed to having human company, and they try very hard to get any scrap of food laying around. So "fox boxes" are scattered around the island to keep food secure. If visitors feed the island foxes, the foxes will not learn how to hunt their own food and will lose their instinctive fear of humans.

We spent the day relaxing at our campsite and wandering around the island. In the late afternoon, we decided to venture to the beach and take a swim. I (Amy) found the water too cold and chickened out. Greg, on the other hand, dove right in. We went back to our campsite to dry off and make dinner. At 8:30, the park ranger showed a film about the restoration efforts on the island. We can't pass up a free movie, so we learned a lot about the island. Since Santa Cruz is an island in the middle of the ocean, the sky at night was probably the darkest sky we have ever seen. We even saw the Milky Way! It was mesmerizing. After a few rounds of the game Love Letter (where I kicked Greg's butt), we retired to our tent to try out our brand new tent fan.