Our National Park winner for 2019 was Channel Islands. Between teaching, school and RA schedules, and our summer trips, we could not find a time for it to work for everyone. So we put it on the calendar for Spring Break 2020. The week we left, things were just starting to get unsettled with Corona virus. A week later and the trip likely would not have happened. Our plan was to spend our first night in SL at my parents. My mom had surgery the week before and I was looking forward to visiting and checking in on her. The entire week of our departure had us starting to worry if this was a good idea. The night before we left we made the decision to stay at a hotel instead of with my parents. We stopped by to drop off some dinner we had picked up for them. Bailee was pretty adamant about not going in their house. With some persuading, we all at least popped in and said hello, but there were no hugs and we were intentional to not touch anything. It all felt so weird, but better to error on the side of caution.
The Weavers met us at our hotel and the kids swam for a bit. The pools were open at this point :/
Bode and his girlfriend brought us some cookies from Crumbl .... just something about those warm chocolate chip cookies.
On our way to Utah, I got the message that our Spring Break had been extended a week due to COVID-19. Things were feeling stranger by the minute. The world was open .... but we were definitely on heightened alert. We planned to break up the drive by staying in St. George the second night. We stopped in Beaver at the Creamery for a treat. The place was bustling .... just lots of hand washing/sanitizing at this point.
We finally found some sunshine and picnicked at the park in St. George.
It had been pretty wet in the area right before we arrived. We took advantage of some sunshine and things drying out and went for hike. Kars wasn't feeling good, so we dropped her an Emmrey at the hotel.
We did the Turtle Rock loop at the Red Cliffs Reserve.
The route we took has three main trails. We started on Chuckwalla, then Paradise Rim and finally looping around to Turtle Rock.
The view of St. George was pretty spectacular.
We actually dined in at Riggattis and then took a pizza back to the girls.
My nervousness about the virus was in full swing, but it was pretty much business as usual around town.
The pool at the hotel was even open!
Good thing because that is pretty much the only thing this girl likes about vacations.
We briefly visited Arizona
before heading into Nevada. It was so strange how different Las Vegas looked on our way out vs the way back.
We finally made it to California. Pathetic attempt at the state sign.
How's this for scenery?
Sunday evening Island Packers, the company chartering the boat ride to the island called and asked if we wanted to delay our excursion due to the weather looking pretty rough.
With the growing uncertainty around COVID, we also weren't sure what another few days might look like. We decided to move forward with our original plans. We had to meet at the harbor in Ventura by 7 am Monday morning. Between the virus and weather, it felt like everything was working against us on this trip.
We boarded the boat and aside from the crew, there was only one other passenger.
Channel Islands National Park is one of the least visited of all of the national parks. The reason has nothing to do with its attractiveness and everything to do with the difficulty getting there. It requires a long boat ride across the often tumultuous Santa Barbara Channel or an expensive island hopper flight.
The National Park is made up of five islands. Santa Cruz is the largest, but was closed to camping during our visit. We camped on Santa Rosa, the second largest. Santa Cruz is incredibly diverse and also home of some of the worlds largest sea caves.
Despite the weather, the conditions were good enough for our captain to navigate the ship completely inside this extraordinary large Painted Cave ... it was amazing!
We even saw a sea lion taking a nap on the rocks inside.
Our fellow traveler was a local who was also camping on Santa Rosa for the week. We were all really envious of his full on rain suit as he quite literally took on the storm on the bow of the boat.
The girls fondly nicknamed him Captain.
There are no services or lodging on the islands. We had to carry in everything we would need including water. After a rough three hour ride through the channel, we arrived at the pier at Bechers Bay.
The sun briefly broke through and I felt optimistic that the rain was behind us as we headed out on the 1.3 mile walk to the campground. With everything on our backs we were on our way.
There are zero pictures of the hike to Water Canyon campground after this. Just as we started up the path it started really raining ... like torrential downpour.
We were absolutely soaked from head to toe by the time we arrived. It was miserable. The wind shelters became life. I can't even imagine if we didn't have this tiny saving grace.
And the bathroom [where I took this pic from] provided some shelter from the rain. Fires are not allowed on the islands [the rain would have put it out anyway], so it was nearly impossible to get anything fully dry.
We were so desperate for warmth, we all went in the tents to wait out the rain. We ended up using three shelters so we could put our tents in two of them. It was fine since we were the only ones on the island besides Captain.
I fell asleep, which is super unusual for me, and took a long nap while Mark and the girls walked to the beach to explore.
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| Beautiful rainbow didn't make up for all the rain :( |
I have a harder time regulating my temperature these days, and try as I might, I could not recover from the wet cold start we had. I spent most of the time at camp wrapped up in my down sleeping bag.
I am afraid I wasn't the best sport. When you are "freezing" it's hard to have a lot of positivity [even in the most gorgeous of settings].
The next day was better. It was cloudy and cool, but the rain had ceased. We had hoped to explore much more of the 53,000 acres, but soggy trails meant that most of our exploring was limited to the beach.
We pretty much had the island to ourselves and basically didn't see another soul the entire time. We saw Captain only once, and the Ranger stopped by to let us know they would be picking us up a couple hours earlier due to COVID restrictions.
We were unintentionally social distancing.
We didn't make it to the small grove of Torrey Pines, but did find a cone that had washed up on the beach.
When we got hungry we headed back to camp for a buffet of various backpacking meals.
The Island Fox is native to the Channel Islands and not found anywhere else on earth. These little creatures are pretty docile and have little fear of humans.
They were fairly harmless other than chewing through Mark's Chums and destroying Karsyn's shoelaces. There was also a story of one possibly trying to scratch its way into the girls tent?
We packed up early Wednesday and made our way back to the pier.
We learned that they would be evacuating all campers on the islands and suspending all tours indefinitely due to COVID. So in retrospect, even with the weather, we were so glad we didn't delay our trip. It would have been the difference of not getting to experience this beautifully rugged place.
The walk back was a dream compared to the walk in.
We had some extra time to explore the buildings that were part of the ranching operation that was on the island from the mid 1800's until 1998.
Crazy that they would transport cattle back and forth by boat.
A schoolhouse was added in the 1900's.
Our boat was scheduled to come at noon, giving us a little time to play on the beach. To get there from the pier requires a climb down a 25 foot ladder
The boat showed up even earlier than expected. Since we had already been shorted two hours due to clearing out the campers, we were in no hurry to end our visit. With the support of the Ranger, we took our time getting back to the boat.
Climbing back up.
Such beauty!
The boat was a little fuller this time with a few campers from one of the other islands.
The extra stop meant we got to cruise along the rugged shoreline.
We were treated to a show of hundreds of dolphins that swam along side us for quite some time.
That was pretty incredible.
It was a harsh transition back to "civilization". We went from having an entire island to ourselves to traffic and people and all sorts of worries we were oblivious to while isolated on the island.
Our first stop was at a fruit stand for some fresh strawberries.
We then grabbed some dinner at the same In -N-Out that we did three days prior. Then we had eaten INSIDE with a gross amount of people. This time it was take-out or drive-thru only.
The first of many meals eaten in our car.
We stayed at a hotel in Santa Anna with a retro vibe. It had such a weird empty feeling. Like we were staying at an abandoned hotel. Our original plan was to spend the following day at Disneyland, but Corona put the kibosh on that.
Sporting our socks that were in our St. Patty's package from Gpa & Gma
We would have had another night in California after Disneyland, but because those plans changed and the weather was cool and rainy, we decided to just head back to St. George and stay two nights instead of one.
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| heading out with our traveling gear |
We stayed at the same hotel in St. George. Mark really wanted to go for a hike on the full day we had there. I was immersed in my book [highly recommend Where the Crawdads Sing] and was content to sit by the pool and read. Weirdly the pool was still open, but limited to occupancy of 10 people. Emmrey played in the pool while I read nearly an entire book in one sitting. Mark, Bailee and Karsyn hiked in Snow Canyon.
They did the Red Sands Trail. It looked beautiful.
Things had changed to a grab-n-go breakfast. However, you could still use the dining area to eat your take-out.
We headed back home Saturday. It was hard to leave the warmth of the desert for winterish conditions.
I pretty much decided on this trip that I want to move to St. George.
We took the route of I-70. Partly for change of scenery, and partly to make a stop at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. It is a beautiful campus about five hours southwest of us on the western slope.
Kars has applied, been accepted and also been offered the Distinguished Scholar Award which covers full tuition. The dilemma is that she is also very interested in USU and with the Legacy and Merit scholarships she would receive there, it would be pretty similar out of pocket expense.
Ahh.... the stress!!! This has been far more agonizing for her than I expected it would be.
A final decision will need to be made soon.
This National Park tour was unlike any we had experienced for many reasons. In retrospect we are so glad we didn't cancel, even with all the uneasiness and anxiety that threatened to ruin our trip. Little did we know that we would be in "stay at home" orders for quite some time after. So it was like our last little hurrah for a while. By the time we got home, our school had been moved to remote learning until April 20th [that changed again soon after] and we were all going to be working from home for the forseeable future. So glad we were able to create unforgettable memories of such an incredible place.
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