We started our US roadtrip (take 2) with Channel Islands National Park. Channel Islands uses a third party tour company, Island Packers, to transport tourists to the islands. If you happen to know someone with a boat, you can also get to the island that way as well. We chose to purchase a boat ticket through the official tour company. It isn’t lost on us that visiting the Channel Islands may be financially out of reach for many people. There are volunteer opportunities available that provide free transportation to the island throughout the year, but these are tailored more to locals.
The official tour company, Island Packers has several boat tours you can select from. You can do kayak and snorkel tours, stay on the boat all day and go from island to island, a whale watching tour, or you can do what we did and just go to a single island and be dropped off. They also offer transportation for overnight campers to and from the islands.
We took the boat to Santa Cruz Island and hiked the Cavern Loop trail. Santa Cruz Island and the Scorpion Beach Anchorage have quite a few easier hikes if you’re taking kiddos.
The Cavern Loop was 2 miles with only a small section of uphill. The rest was mostly flat and the downhill at the end. There was an option to extend it to 5 miles and go see some other viewpoints. We were glad to have picked the 2 mile hike. After a year of Covid quarantine, we all are still getting our hiking legs back. We stopped at the Cavern viewpoint for lunch before heading back down to the beach.
We had lots of extra time to kill at the beach so the kids did their Jr Ranger books. On the boat on the way back, we found a ranger to interview for the final Jr Ranger activity, and she also swore the kids in as Jr Rangers right there on the boat. The boat ride back was also super eventful because we saw not only a humpback whale, but also a blue whale, and a huge pod of dolphins! Ben reminded me that it was his very first boat ride ever. I told him he was a super lucky kid. I had to take a lot of boats to see any whales or dolphins and he saw them on his first try! On the ride to the island we saw a minky whale (or at least some on the boat did, my view was blocked by tourist butts).
Channel Islands National Park day 2 for us was spent at the visitors center. They had an amazing native garden in the front with fun metal sculptures. James and I had our own scavenger hunt looking for plants that we recognized from our own front yard native garden. Inside the visitors center is a diorama of native animals and plants found on the island as well as a small live aquarium.
There’s a tower you can climb that takes you from the “sea floor” through the kelp forest to “ground level” describing the various sea creatures you can find in the water around Channel Islands. At the top there are telescopes to look out over the water to the islands and various other sites. The visitor center here was really well done, though small.
We watched the park video which was narrated by Kevin Costner. The video was also really well done and talked quite a bit about the the role indigenous peoples have played (and continue to play) on the island landscape over the years.
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