SoCal Road Trip 2006

We woke up early (8am) and headed to Joe's down the block for breakfast. We were surprised to see that it was almost full of very animated people! It turns out that there was a canoe race that morning back to the mainland, the Catalina Challenge. The women's group went at 9:30 and we walked out past the main dock to watch them start. 26 miles of paddling, it would take them about 6 hours!

We wanted to take an off-road tour of the island so we looked around for a tour operator and found Discovery Tours which had a 3 hour tour in a Mercedes Unimog, a 12 passenger 4WD truck. The tour was set for 2pm so we went back to the hotel and relaxed, then had lunch, relaxed some more, and then went to meet our tour. It turned out that we were the only ones who had signed up, so we had a private tour!

We started out driving up and out of Avalon, then did a big circle around the main part of the island. We drove along narrow mountain roads, past a number of Bison (there are about 150 on the island), and up to the Avalon Airport at the top of the island. We had lunch there and then proceeded down to the far side of the island where we saw a couple of beaches where people camp. Along the way back to town we stopped to visit Pimu, a bald eagle that had been injured 6 years before and nursed back to health. The ride was a little cold on the way back, but the sun came back out before we arrived back in town.

We had dinner at the Channel House and then headed back to the room to watch Zathura before going to sleep.