SophiaTravel

Channel Islands National Park

Channel Islands National Park has 5 islands – Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Santa Miguel and Anacapa.

Currently only four islands are open to the public, Santa Barbara island is closed to the public.

Before boarding on the boat, there is brush your shoes facility on the port of Venture. The Channel Islands are isolated island and the ranger try their best to maintain the original eco-system.

A side story is when we visit Santa Barbara, it happens to be LA strike / riot due to Trump’s anti-immigrant policy. At the beginning of our trip, we seldom see people in the restaurant, the owner told us due to the riot, they lost most of the guests – most of them are Mexicans. Also nobody cleaned our hotel rooms. Until the last day of our visit, riot finished, we have our hotel room cleaned and we see people coming back to the restaurants.

Transportation

Island packer is the national park cruise service, departing either from Venture or Oxnard to above mentioned four islands. The cruise is a medium size boat.

The boat has two stories, it also has hand rails on the side. The day we took the boat ride was a very windy day, the wave was high. I had a severe seasick issue, but my son really enjoys the “roller-coaster” boat ride.

Suggestion: If you have seasick issue, sit first story outside to get some fresh air, also less shaky than the second story.

During the boat ride, you can almost always spot dolphin or sea lions, whale is bit of luck to spot it.

On the cruise, occasionally we can see the dolphins and whale.

Sea lions

My son with two big new-grown big teeth.

Santa Rosa Island

From Venture, it takes about 3 hours to sail to Santa Rosa Island. Santa Rosa island is an isolated island and has no cell signals. The whole island only has 12 camp sites.

During the windy day, the tent got blowed hard which brings a different experience.

Santa Rosa Island has a long history, native Indians live in the island as the first resident, they used the canoes to ship outside to trade once a year. Then European came in 1800s. In order to get fresh meat, Spain shipped sheep, pigs and cows to the island, the sheep eat the bushes to the dirt, the land got eroded. The island original plant was bushes, since the bushes was eaten by cows and sheep, Spain imported grass to the island. The imported grass still exists these days in the island.

In 1980, Channel Islands becomes National Park, the rangers took actions to restore the original ecosystem. Now the island does not have pigs, sheep or cows, the animals are lizard, island fox, mice, birds (raven, eagles, scrub jay, etc).

Island fox eat mouse, lizard and mostly plants for living, that is why the guide joked that the island fox is vegetarian fox. The fox is typically nocturnal animal, but given the island has no shelter for the fox (not many bushes restored so far), the fox is very active in day time.

The mushroom in Santa Rosa Island, this mushroom is called bracket fungi and it is inedible.

The beach in Santa Rosa Island is half open to the public, it is famously white sand beach.

Santa Cruz Island

Santa Cruz Island has two ports – Prisoner and Scorpion habor.

Scorpion harbor

Scorpion is a great port for scuba diving and snorkeling. It also has a lot of trails for hiking. Due to the limited time, we did not visit scorpion port.

Prisoner harbor

Prisoner harbor has moderate to strenuous trails, it has at least 2-3 10+ miles strenuous trails.

It is interesting to know the ecosystem in Santa Cruz Island.

This image is the mint. In Santa Cruz Island, mint is adapted to favor animal flavor, however, in mainland, mint is adapted to favor human flavor.

This plant has two flower colors – yellow and red which indicates whether the flower is ready for pollination. The flower can change the color to signal the readiness of pollination.

This tree trunk is always cold given the water comes from the root and the root is very close to the ground.

The orange flower in the distant mountain is the flower of the trees in the front pic.

Painted cave

Painted cave is not man-paint cave. The color is naturally made. Our boat gets very close to the cave, but we did not take kayak to get very close to the cave.

The cave boat ride takes about 10-12 minutes. And I believe the color of the cave is because of different elements – such as iron, sulfur, etc

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is a highly recommended place to visit. This garden is different from the most garden – such as garden in New Zealand, etc. By visiting this garden, you do not feel the garden is man-made, it is more like hiking in the forest, occasionally it has some man-made garden plants. According to the tour guide, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is the first garden trying to maintain the local native plants – such as California Poppy, redwood, etc.

Below pic is the blueberry growing on the tree.

Solvang

Solvang is a small Denmark town in south California. You can find wind mill decorations, beer brewers, very dedicate danish bakeries in the town.

Solvang town is decorated as Denmark style, it has Denmark stylish windmill and small decorations inside the shop is gorgeous.

Even the flower on the street is white and red mixed which symbols Denmark national flag.

Horseback riding

We rode the horse 1.5 hours along the mountains in Santa Barbara. It is the first time I rode the horse in the mountains, need to control the horse down hill, up hill, cross then stream and forbid the horse to eat the plants along the road. The ranger gives each of us the whip which we can use to ship the house butt to make it run. Also we can kick horse belly to make it run. We also can control the horse direction by pulling the rope to left, right and pull straight to stop the horse.

This picture shows the whips in our left hand.

My horse name is called Maxwell who is 18 years old (Maxwell equation in electromagnetic?), my son’s horse name is Bug shot who is 11 years old.