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.