Just 50 miles off the California coast, Channel Islands National Park is a primitive and stark contrast to neighboring Los Angeles. This is what much of the Southern California landscape would look like without irrigation, electricity, and asphalt. And it’s fantastic. But it’s not easy, especially if you want to stay overnight. It’s a great trip for anyone in SoCal and especially worthwhile for the adventurous soul who doesn’t mind a little dirt.
We visited Channel Islands in October 2018
Getting There
Some things aren’t meant to be easy. One of our goals in visiting every US National Park includes taking either a sunrise or sunset photo at each. Other than the occasional pre-dawn wake up alarm, it doesn’t seem that difficult. Enter Channel Islands National Park. The five island park sits in the Santa Barbara channel, 80 miles west of Los Angeles and is most commonly visited as a day trip via an hour ferry from nearby Ventura Harbor. In researching this trip though, I soon realized that by taking a day trip, we would miss both sunrise and sunset from the park. So, we needed to camp. There are ample camping opportunities on most of the islands, but all are primitive (no flush toilets or electricity) and require carrying in (and out) all of your gear, food, water, and trash. Piece of cake for the experienced backpacker, but we thought our days tent camping were behind us. But if we wanted to get our photos, we needed to stay overnight, and we needed to camp. Ok, we were all in.
Our journey started with a visit to the National Park’s Robert J. Lagomarsino Visitor Center, which is actually on the mainland adjacent to the dock where most people catch the ferry. We anticipated that our Sunday afternoon ferry would be less crowded with only overnight visitors aboard. Make that 5 passengers. The ferry to the island is run by IslandPackers.com and they’ve earned their good reputation. We were outnumbered by the crew, but upon arrival at the dock at Santa Cruz Island’s Scorpion Anchorage, there were over 100 day trip visitors and returning campers for the trip back to the mainland. October is a wonderful time to visit, with typically calm seas, comfortable days, and clear, cool nights. We specifically picked a date with a new moon, meaning a totally dark sky, ideal for Milky Way photos. We were in for a surprise or two.
Going The
Extra Mile
Actually, it’s more like a quarter mile. Once we offloaded our gear from the ferry, it was a fairly short trek along a mostly gravel and dirt path to the camping area. We had one of those collapseable carts to haul our tent, sleeping bags, cooler, etc which was a lot easier than carrying everything. The campground is primitive which is no big deal, but the sites are good size and generally shady. There is well water available, but it’s advisable to bring drinking water on the ferry. Since we were only staying one night, it was all manageable. There were dozens of foxes around the campground and we had heard that they were exceptional thieves. At one point, we were sitting on our site’s picnic table and a fox climbed up and examined my backpack, hoping to get inside for a snack. The Island Fox was nearly extinct, but formation of the National Park protected them and now the population is stable. And super cute.
Uh, Honey
What’s That?
After setting up camp, we grabbed our photo gear and headed out for a hike with a plan to reach Potato Harbor before sunset. The 2 mile trip out took us up some moderately steep trails to a beautiful, rocky cliff trail. The views were stunning at every turn, but we noted that with no shade anywhere, it’s surely scorching hot in the summertime. We encountered only a small handful of others along the hike and set up on the bluff above Potato Harbor with a good view to the west. The sunset views were spectacular as we ate our picnic dinners. But our primary goal was to capture the night sky with no moon and no light from the mainland. As we prepared for the Milky Way to become visible, we noticed a few more people heading to the overlook. We thought they were just late for the sunset until they started cheering. Huh??? When we looked up, we were startled by a bright light to our east, growing in size and looking like it was headed our way. We didn’t know what was going on. Alien abduction? No. This was a SpaceX launch and as the main booster separated, the twilight sky lit up like a giant nebula. I think Laurie’s pictures of the launch, from our Channel Islands vista, just might be the best ones on the planet. Following our bonus launch photo shoot, we resumed our Milky Way hunt. It was as dark as we’ve seen, including nights in Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks, and the stars were out in force. Check out our Photo Gallery and Photo Tips for how to capture great night sky shots.
It was maybe 10 pm when we started our trek back to camp and it was fairly easy to follow the trail with our headlamps (don’t forget these). As we walked the two miles back to camp, we came to an old windmill that sat in a small valley. Laurie knew this would make a great foreground to some more night sky pictures. This was our favorite shot and made the detour a great choice.
We finally made it back to camp, a bit tired, but well satisfied after a day and night of photo hunting. The nighttime temperatures were perfect and we had no trouble getting a good night’s sleep.
Sea Cave
Kayaking
We awoke well after sunrise to the smell of coffee and bacon from our camping neighbors. There weren’t many of us and we were clearly outnumbered by the foxes. We took down our tent, broke camp, and headed off to our next adventure for the day. We had reserved a guided Adventure Sea Cave Kayak Tour with Channel Islands Adventure Company. The tour we had took us inside several caves of different sizes, many with amazing colors too. This was a highlight of our trip and the excellent workout ended in the early afternoon, just in time for our PB&J lunches before our trip back to the mainland. Even if you’re only going for a day trip, you should definitely make sure you fit in a kayak tour.
Our ferry trip home was mostly full, this time with lots of daytrippers. Still, it was a smooth crossing, made easier by literally hundreds of dolphins swimming and jumping alongside the boat. Plus, Island Packers also had a good selection of decent snacks and drinks. They even had microbrew options, which we bypassed knowing we had a drive home to San Diego ahead of us.
A trip to Channel Islands should be on every Southern California resident’s list, for nothing other than to see what our region looks like minus irrigation, concrete, and electricity. But for nature lovers, you get a unique, breathtaking coastal landscape worthy of its National Park designation. And if you’re willing to go the extra mile and stay overnight, you’ll be treated to some of the best night skies you’ll ever see.