Our fourth day is spent on the road. After completing our check-out at the main lodge the night before, Jane and I get an early start and leave Big Sur heading south, retracing our previous day’s drive. At Piedras Blancas, we spend a little extra time with the elephant seals (at a smaller colony just south of the main viewing area) before continuing on toward the beach towns of central California. The drive takes us past Cambria and Morro Bay (we briefly stop to photograph the volanic plug of Morro Rock from the north, but the pervading fog renders this impossible), across vast coastlines and through rolling canyons and foothills. After passing San Luis Obispo, we leave the highway at Pismo Beach - a surfer’s paradise which is all but evacuated on this overcast April morning - and step into Splash Café to try its locally famous seafood and clam chowder. I opt for some clam strips with fries, while Jane accidentally orders a chowder bowl with every possible additional topping. The result is a slightly pricey but totally worthwhile sourdough bread bowl smothered with bacon, cheddar, scallions, crab claw meat, and chopped Arctic surf clams. We devour the entire thing at record pace.
Back on the road, we make a long drive inland along Highway 101, stopping for gas in Nipomo and continuing south into the sun-soaked vineyards, orange groves, and pastoral hillsides near Los Olivos. Here, we take the more direct route to Santa Barbara via Highway 154, ascending past Cachuma Lake into a traverse of the Santa Ynez Mountains, and passing the Chumash Painted Caves on the descent toward the coast. We’re making good time; it’s just past noon on Friday as we enter Santa Barbara, and the seaside town is about as quiet as anything in a hundred-mile vicinity of Los Angeles can be on a Friday - meaning that the four-lane freeway (the first we have seen in several days) is merely full of cars, not jam-packed with them. All in all, the drive has gone exceedingly smoothly, and we soon reach our destination for the night, a roadside motel just down the road from the marina in Ventura. Soon after checking in, we start pondering how we’ll kill an entire afternoon and evening in Ventura (our boat to Santa Cruz Island being not until the next morning), which is how we wind up seeing the final Avengers movie, on opening day, at the Riverpark multiplex cinema down the highway, with a totally unfamiliar crowd in a totally unfamiliar location. In hindsight, there was definitely no better way to experience a blockbluster of that sort. After the movie, we head up the road near our motel to shop at Trader Joe’s (buying beef jerky, dried apple rings, other trail snacks, and an extra bottle of water for our long hike the next day) before eating a sit-down dinner at the El Pollo Loco across the street. We have definitely returned to classic California suburbia, and it feels ill-fitting yet oh-so-familiar at the same time.
In the morning, we’re up early to don our gear (sun hats, windbreakers, and backpack with liter bottles and snacks), load the car, and have a continental breakfast before checking out of the motel. We drive a few minutes west down the road to the docks, where we park in front of the Island Packers office for our outbound boat to Santa Cruz Island. Santa Cruz (not to be confused with the city of the same name north of Monterrey) is the largest of the five islands that comprise Channel Islands National Park, the other four being Anacapa, San Miguel, Santa Barbara, and Santa Rosa.
These offshore islands, together with the marine sanctuary that encircles them, represent one of the most ecologically rich areas of an already biodiverse state. In addition to a varied cast of pelagic life including migrating whales, dolphins, seabirds, and pinnipeds, the islands are home to many endemic inhabitants found nowhere else, including the island scrub jay, the omnipresent island fox, and several subspecies of island oak and Torrey pine. All in all, over two thousand species of flora and fauna call the Channel Islands home, which is large part of why Jane and I scheduled our vacation around this boat ride. In the early planning phase, we had even entertained an overnight trip to Santa Cruz Island (which would have allowed for an entire day of sea kayaking into the sea caves and coves along the island’s eastern edge), but the task of furnishing or transporting a full set of camping gear cross-country proved to be too daunting. So it was that we eventually settled on a day trip and an 8-mile round-trip hike from Scorpion Ranch to Smugglers’ Cove.
After checking in at the Island Packers office, we acquire our third and final fridge magnet at the national park’s adjoining souvenir store - a gem-studded seashell. In short course, we board the double-decked cruise boat with a bevy of other day-trippers, campers, and a middle school class on a field trip. We sit outside at the stern of the vessel; the hour-long ride across the channel is chilly but mostly uneventful. We are briefly joined by a pod of dolphins heading east as we past the sinuous, three-part ridge that makes up Anacapa Island. As we reach the eastern end of Santa Cruz Island shortly after 9 AM, the boat slows as it eases into Scorpion Anchorage, entering a coastline pockmarked by eroding coves and caves, and dotted with guano-covered sea stacks. Ashore, we receive a brief safety talk and an orientation to the island’s natural features. Then, we are set loose into Scorpion Ranch, formerly part of the Caire family’s sheep ranching operation on Santa Cruz Island up until the early 20th century, but now a museum highlighting the natural and human history of the islands - the latter of which dates back over ten thousand years to the Chumash people, a tribe of coastal hunter-gatherers who built a maritime empire that spanned central and southern California for centuries. Like native tribes elsewhere in the West, they were largely obliterated by first contact with Europeans, or subsequently enslaved by Spanish missionaries; today, only a few thousand of their descendants remain along the coast.
Scorpion Ranch sits in a shaded dell that faces east to the open sea, and in the spring, it is home to a profusion of wild mustard and morning glories. Most of the hikers ascend a steep path north out of the valley toward Cavern Point and Potato Harbor. We climb out of the canyon to the south, taking a longer overland hike across the eastern portion of the island to Smugglers Cove.
Barren and grey for most of the year, Santa Cruz Island is brimming with life and color after the rainy winter months. The trail we follow, a dirt track across the island’s rolling hills and valleys, is a pleasant one. It climbs gradually from Scorpion Anchorage to a ridgeline overlooking the eastern portion of the island. From here, we get a terrific panorama of the the island’s massive and mountainous interior, which is owned by the Nature Conservancy and off-limits to casual visitors. Indeed, at 98 square miles, Santa Cruz is California’s largest offshore island, topping even Catalina. Our little day hike, expansive as it feels, only traverses the eastern tip of the island’s landmass.
The plateaus above the coastline are a land of endless wild grass, coastal sage, and manzanita bushes, interlaced with fields of wild mustard and great white clumps of morning glory, visible from miles away. The shade of trees is rare - limited to the occasional island oak, standing proudly and lonely on a rise in the land - but the weather is perfect for hiking, and a gentle breeze blows in off the ocean. With seven hours on the island before our scheduled boat back to the mainland, we walk at a leisurely pace; I stop frequently to photograph the landscape and the wildlife, while Jane munches away at her pack of beef jerky. We encounter several island foxes, wily but nonchalant creatures who, quite unlike their mainland counterparts, apparently have zero compunction about being near humans, rummaging through food bags and tents at the island’s campsites, or indeed, sharing the trail with us as we walk beside them.
Two miles into the hike, the dirt path begins a winding, steep descent toward Smugglers’ Cove, an isolated bay on the east side of the island where bootleggers and rum-runners off the coast of California would hide away in the 19th century. As we descend, we can see the western part of Anacapa Island on the horizon rising out of the blue haze of the sea. The trail makes another inland turn around a steep gully before descending to the sea along a gravel drive. We end our walk on the beach at Smugglers’ Cove, which is tucked away beyond a grove of live oak and a pebble beach. A long break is in order here; after taking some photos of the cove and Anacapa in the distance, we lean against a tree trunk and break into our bag of snacks, enjoying the cool island weather and the sound of the waves lapping up on the shore.
Fully hydrated and satiated with beef jerky, granola bars, and apple rings, we begin the return hike to Scorpion Ranch. The climb out of Smugglers’ Cove to the eastern ridgeline is a tough one, rising over seven hundred feet in a under a mile, but with frequent breaks to enjoy the scenery, we manage to slog our way back to the top of the trail. From there, the remainder of the walk is uneventful, though by the time we descend into Scorpion Ranch, our knees have begun to ache, and I’ve become painfully aware of the holes I’ve gradually worn into the insoles of my hiking boots, which have served me since our first walks in Maryland, in the fall of 2014. Though I will still wear them for several more months, this hike will turn out to be their last significant outing, after a storied career throughout Scandinavia, New Zealand, and the United States. Not bad for a pair of $30 on-sale shoes.
Back at the ranch, Jane and I visit the old ranch house-turned museum, and sit and rest at a bench with the schoolkids, who have also returned from their explorations. We snack on more apple rings and eventually migrate down to the rocky boulder beach while waiting for our return boat, which arrives promptly after 4 PM. We sit again at the stern for the ride back to the mainland. As the late afternoon sun sends shimmers of mauve and gold along the Pacific horizon, I turn back and take photos of Santa Cruz Island, receding in the distance. Along the journey home, we stop to watch a basking shark (second largest among the true fishes, after the whale shark), and during our passage through the channel, our boat is accompanied by an enormous pod of dolphins - perhaps 40 to 50 animals swimming in several groups. We arrive dockside in Ventura around 6 PM, and return to the road for our last, long drive in the Jeep - along the 101 into Los Angeles, across Pasadena into the San Bernadino Valley, and finally south via Pomona and Chino back to Jane’s home in Anaheim. We arrive close to 9 PM; Jane’s parents have saved dinner for us, and there is a made bed and a warm shower waiting for us after a long day of adventure. It is not such a bad way to conclude one of these trips - by coming home. If only it were so simple.
