aggienaut | Mar. 27th, 2008

   The day after returning from the Berkeley conference (Ie Monday the 17th, a week and a half ago) I met up with Kerri down in San Diego. She had spent the weekend visiting San Diego with her family on family vacation. That evening we went to the Stone Brewery in San Marcos.

   On Tuesday we made preparations and plans for Mission: Catalina.
   Wednesday morning at 7am we met Dave at Dana Point marina. We set off with him, his nephew Thaddeus, and Thaddeus' girlfriend, for Catalina. Presently, we spotted a dolphin. We cut the engines, and presently a pod of some 200+ dolphins was surrounding us!! They proceeded to frolick and were so numerous that one could easily hear their dolphin-noises through the deck of the boat (which was pretty much the cutest thing ever). Once we got underway again the dolphins came and jumped through the water at our bow and behind the boat. It was definitely awesome.

   After taking time out for the dolphins and for Dave & co to practice their bloodthirsty trickery for awhile we finally arrived at the backside of Two Harbours, the principal village of the northern end of the island. Without even tying up to the dock Kerri & I jumped off the boat and our ride departed.

   Unfortunately from Two Harbours it was miles to the Little Harbour campground, and then either 16 directly to the town of Avalon, or nine to another campground called Blackjack from whence it would be a further 11 to Avalon -- the lack of a campground in the middle of the island is a serious detriment to hiking it in two days.

   As it turns out, hiking the island apparently is not something they expect a great deal of people to do, as we didn't pass a single other hiker during our three days out there. There's daily van service between the campgrounds and that appears to be what most tourists there use. Also the trails are laid out in a haphazard manner that makes no effort to avoid unnecessary elevation change (going right over the top of hills it could easily have gone around the side of), and going straight down hills at steep grade instead of making switchbacks (aside from being tedious to walk on, everyone knows that a trail of grade steeper than 8% is likely to become a wash).

   So we set out for the Little Harbour campground. Presently we came across a big lizard on the ground. I put my foot down right in front of it to see if it was dead ... and it scampered right up my leg!! For a short time it even sat on my shoulder, as pictured. I named him "Captain Awesome." Anyway, since we had gotten a late start from Two Harbours we only went as far as Little Harbour on Wednesday. Had a miserable little campfire that had the magic ability to blow smoke directly at us no matter where we were sitting. The campgrounds are nice though and it would definitely be fun to go out there with a group of people just to camp.

   The next morning (Thursday) we packed up and hiked six miles up to the "Airport-in-the-Sky," with the plan to from there decide whether we felt like hiking the 10 miles to Avalon or the 6 or 7 out to Blackjack (from where we'd still be 9 from Avalon). After eating buffalo burgers at the airport we decided to go for the gold and head from Avalon despite the fact that it was already mid-afternoon.

   It was 10pm by the time we finally made it into Avalon. The last few hours had actually been a quite pleasant moonlit walk down a a tree-lined road along the coast. Finally arriving in Avalon we were like "so.. no what?" The Avalon campground was a mile out of town in the opposite direction. Since we'd already hiked 16 miles and Avalon was our destination we took a taxi to the campground. Another mile just wasn't gonna happen. The next morning we hiked from the campground into town and felt like we hadn't missed out on anything, since that mile was almost entirely down streets of the town.
   Friday morning we had a delicious breakfast at the "Busy Bee Cafe" right on the water. Poked around Avalon for awhile, and then caught the commercial ferry back to Dana Point.
   Though we didn't hike from point to point, the island is 21 miles long from end to end. We did however hike between the major population points on each end, AND our route happened to be 21 miles exactly in length.

   Friday night we went down to San Diego and hung out with our friend Mara, whom I had been chairing with when Kerri was first our delegate. Saturday we stopped by the Stone Brewery again on our way back up and had a pleasant spring afternoon experience lounging in the grass in their garden there. On Sunday (the 23rd) Kerri flew back to Arizonaland.