Channel Islands - Santa Cruz Island/Oxnard/Ventura 12/30/13-1/2/14

For anyone living in or visiting Southern California, this is a great short trip! We took our bikes on the car and found flat bike trails all along the coast in the Channel Islands Harbor/Oxnard and Ventura. The highlight was a day trip over to Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands. Right now there are record numbers of southbound migrating grey whales passing through the channel and we even saw a pod of orcas! When a large pod of dolphins saw the orcas, they swam off as fast as they could. Many mother grey whales who are traveling with young calves tend to swim on a course closer to shore, most likely to avoid their only predators - orcas. The orcas we saw were swimming quite close to shore so I don't want to think about the dangers to the youngest grey whale calves who are on their journey to the lagoons of Baja California. A number of adventurous campers were on our boat with all their camping gear, including kayaks. 'Island Packers' is a well-run organization with boats leaving Ventura harbor at 9am, arriving at Santa Cruz Island at about 10:00 and returning for pick-ups at 3:30pm, back to Ventura around 4:40 or 5pm. There are several easy to moderate hikes you can do during your time on the island. Wear good shoes, bring water and food, and bring a plastic bag to take all of your trash back to the mainland with you. There are pit toilets and drinking water for refilling your containers. Give yourselves a treat and visit this beautiful part of California! And yes, there was some really fun surf up there too - see my surf galleries under Surfing - Ventura - Ventura County (that's as close as I was allowed to name the spot!!!)