Ventura: Mission San Beunaventura...

                                               

Now surrounded by downtown Ventura, Mission San Buenaventura, read its history here ...

that actually includes such things as relocating nuns, earthquake, tidal waves and pirates, was built starting in 1782 by Franciscan Priest and the labor of the Native Chumash tribe, including a elaborate ditch system to bring water to the mission, surrounding gardens and orchards.

Through the wonderful gift shop and "ticket booth"...

a little museum room does a great job of letting it sink in just how old a church built and used  just a few years after the Revolutionary War is, complete with wooden bells that "dinged" or "thunked" with a small bit of metal inside.

 Here, posters annoucing the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Francisan priest to the shores of California have now become relics themselves...

Even the rafters, an addition to the original church or possible an addition to an addition, are old, very old...

Outside, a courtyard is formed by the museum/gift shop, the chapel...

and the Rectory...

We were there the Saturday after Good Friday, and early enough to observe the clean up from the Holy Week's festivities...

and the preparation for the celebration of Easter Sunday, the red being traded out for white...

Inside the oldest part of the existing church... 

the chapel follows the style and decore' of other mission church down the coast of California and across the Spanish territories of Arizona and New Mexico...

 the chapel at the Carmel Mission...

the alter at Mission San Barbara 

and even the ornate sanctuary of  Mission San Xavier Del Bac, almost at the Mexican border in Arizona...

Which we visit a very long time ago, when the children were much younger and I took a little break from the crowds and sketched the exterior, complete with mismatched and unfinished towers...

Yes, I have a thing for churches, all sizes. Intrigued by the beautiful important missions as well as the more primitive village churches captured here, from the High Road to Taos...

Channel Islands: Where They Left Prisoners and Other Isolated Critters

The next day we headed back out to sea, crossing the International Shipping Lane....

and in the presence of dolphins again...

to make our way to the largest of the Channel Islands, Santa Cruz, protected by the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy. We gained access at Prisoner's Harbor, a locale with a sorted past, that included the forced removal of the Chumash tribe, native's to the islands for hundreds of years and an ill conceived transplant of prisoners, left on the island with supplies and livestock around 1830, that did not go so well. The prisoners trying to make boats from not completely cured cow hide that ended attracting shark.

Since then the island has been mostly been a private cattle ranch, only recently donated to the public...

Little buildings are left on this side of the island, one of the few still standing near the shore were storage sheds where goods were stored until the occasional boat came to the island. 

Gathering for instructions from our guide, we woke up an Island Fox, just recently brought back from the edge of extinction by local efforts. Tiny as a small cat, the fox only resides on the Channel Islands and nowhere else in the world. 

Not overly developed, the island is also a supreme example of how the coastline of California would look, if not for the great development on the other side of the Santa Barbara Channel.

Santa Cruz is one of the least visited public parks, needing a guide to explore the trails. 

We picked a hike called Pelican's Roost and it did not take long for me to realize I was ill suited for the pace and the confines of being in the middle  of a fast moving train of people, hurrying up a steep trail on the side of a cliff...

I gladly sent my "mountain goat" family along and sat here and tried to sketch this view. The same one the man on watch would have, ready to signal the passing ships of the need to transport the goods waiting in the storage sheds near the peer. 

Mostly I just stared off to the horizon and hoped the boat came back for us, I had heard it's engine roar and watched it move off to the other side of the island. The whole experience was unnerving, much more than the time I have spent on top of a mountain, looking down at valleys thousands of feet below.

Luckily my family did come back to get me...

and after another hour or so at the shore...

where not only the passengers brought in that morning, but a few rather scruffy scientist who had been on the island for days or weeks doing research were ready to get back on the mainland...

a line forming even before the boat left the dock for a chilled beer from the galley.

Crossing the channel again, we took a meandering route and were rewarded with another sighting of a humpback, its black slick skin glistening atop the water. What great creatures has God created and what a privilege to travel along side them.

The Channel Islands: Better Than Sea World...

From the west side of the Rocky Mountains to the West coast takes us fourteen hours of 

driving with a few In and Out Burger stops along the way...

 getting to Ventura Beach right before the sun was sinking below the water.

A few days later, we moved farther west, this time by boat from the Ventura Harbor to see what we could see....

and it didn't take long with sea lions basking in the sun anywhere they could.

Soon, dolphins found us, dipping, diving and racing the boat.

Nothing is so thrilling as watching animals where they belong, do what they 

want to do, with no constraints.

Near one of the oil rigs that are paced off along the Santa Barbara Channel, a shallow shelf of a mere eight hundred and fifty feet or so, before the ocean bottom drops to thousands of feet, the show continued with a feeding frenzy on the surface of the water. Pelicans and seagulls swirling above...

 and ever so often, signaled by a puff of air...

A humpback whale getting a mouthful and then sinking back down under the water. 

Turning back towards the mainland, other puff coming up from the water, signaled grey whales, in a rhythmic migration north towards Alaska, making a long journey from the other polar cap. Able to hold their breath for upwards of 8-10 minutes between shorter repetitive breaths, we followed them and waited, rewarded several times with them resurfacing...

just showing the ridge of their spine or the tips of their tails. I wondered if that is all 

the ancient sailors saw, creating imaginative sea monsters...

When the tails came up high, that signaled a deep dive and the great whales disappeared into a world we can hardly conceive of, even now.