I first went to Catalina Island in 2005 with Kim to meet her family. Catalina Island is a beautiful destination off the Southern California coast, 22 miles southwest of Los Angeles in the Pacific Ocean. It’s main town is Avalon (population ~4,000), nestled in a small harbor on the protected northeast side (facing the mainland). Access to the island is via ferry from Long Beach, San Pedro, Dana Point, or Newport Beach and it is somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half crossing, depending on which port you choose to go from. The island is largely undeveloped with about 88% of it protected by the Catalina Island Conservancy. The most notable structure on the island is what is erroneously called the Casino Building, though it is not a gambling casino, but rather a historic 1929 Art Deco theater and ballroom. Sitting high above the town of Avalon is the Wrigley Mansion, named for the Wrigley family that owned most of the island for over the past century. There is also the Wrigley Memorial & Botanic Garden and an old working ranch in the interior that the family operated back in the day.
In the summertime, the popular activities on the island include snorkeling, diving, kayaking, zip-lining, hiking and glass-bottom boat tours. There are also interior eco-tours via Jeep or bus to go try to find the wandering buffalo heard (150 roam the island), which came there in 1924 for a film shoot and never left. It can get crowded in summer, but is much less so in the spring/fall, and its quite deserted in winter. We are actually stopping there with my granddaughters while on a short cruise this summer, but we decided with some neighborhood friends to make a day-trip excursion to update our awareness of the island that we can see from our deck on a clear day (its about 60 miles from us as the crow flies).
Being an island, there is very limited use of cars that is allowed and most people walk, rent golf carts or use bikes. The timing for a day-trip involves arriving at the ferry dock in Dana Point by 8:30 and departing at 9:30 for the 90 minute crossing. When we arrived in Avalon at 11:00 it was sunny and cool…just right for a touring day. I had pre-reserved two four-person golf cart rentals, so we ventured forth on what is a pretty much pre-set scenic track around the island, focused on the hills surrounding Avalon. The first stop was up the big hill where the Wrigley Mansion sits regally overlooking the town. You can actually rent one of six Deluxe rooms there for an overnight, but we basically just drove by and imagined what it would be like to have made your fortune on chewing gum and then owning an entire island just off Los Angeles. From there we went out past the local golf course and up a valley to the botanical gardens. The tour then wends its way back up the opposing hillside to the northwest of town, where the views of the Pacific Coast are stunning. Then, back down to the Descanso Beach Club, where the small local retirement community hangs our playing gin rummy and sipping tropical umbrella drinks rather than brave the tourist traffic on the very commercial walkways of Avalon.
I had reserved the golf carts for two hours, but our tour, highlighted by only a few stops, only took us about 80 minutes, so we wandered over to the only nice restaurant right on the water, the Bluewater Grill. There we lunched on seafood and enjoyed the salt air of the harbor, watching fishing boats and a stray yellow submarine move this way and that in a lazy, haphazard way. That left us a few hours to wander and shop the main drag of Avalon, which we did very casually. Even our resident shopaholic, Kim, was only mildly interested in the offerings, but we managed to while away the two hours until it was time to wander back to the ferry dock to await our departure at 5:00pm. We had one moment of concern when we saw the ferry leave at 4:00pm, only to realize that that was the larger ferry boat heading to San Pedro with the L.A. crowd, while we awaiting the Dana Point ferry with the Orange County and San Diego crowd.
The 90 minute boat ride back over the very calm seas gave off some lovely sunset views, but was otherwise uneventful. Most of the passengers looked to be like us, daytrippers just out for a mid-winter excursion, but there were a few locals riding the ferry as well. It’s somewhat hard for me to imagine what would motivate someone to live on an isolated, mostly tourist-oriented island that sits only 22 mile from one of the great metropolitan meccas of the world, but 4,000 or so people do just that. As for people who more regularly frequent Catalina, they must be outdoors people because that is mostly what Catalina offers. I know Kim’s nephews are fans of the island, but then one of them spent two years on the northern end of the island working as a ranger and therefore has a connection and memories that keep them coming back. I’ve written before about the pirate history and culture of the island, and who doesn’t like romantic pirate dreams, right?
It’s been almost twenty years since Kim and I have visited Catalina and I can say that it doesn’t seem to have changed a bit in that time. It’s funny that we will visit again so soon this summer with the granddaughters, but it makes me wonder if we will ever again have occasion to head out to the island. Perhaps we will be happy just glancing at it from our deck on a clear day. Two of our local friends that can also see the island and have been out there a few times in their lives were cool to joining our trek and its not hard to understand why. Catalina is a nice place to say you have visited, but it seems to be only so interesting to do very often. Our almost twenty year hiatus seems about right, so maybe we will go once more when I reach the ripe old age of 90. By then maybe there will be a second seaside restaurant to try.