Iceplant on Anacapa Island
70 miles north of LA, 30 miles south of Santa Barbara, and a 45-minute boat ride from the dock at Ventura, the Channel Islands are the first great adventure of Central California.
The five Channel Islands — Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and what’s known as “the other” Santa Barbara — are an easy day trip from Ventura or Santa Barbara. They’re wonderful place to view seabirds, seals, and ancient plants indigenous to this part of California.
The islands are very old, fiercely government-protected and extensively archived; in 1994, the intact skeleton of a Pleistocene pygmy mammoth was unearthed on Santa Rosa Island.
(Personally, I love the idea that mammoths the size of horses used to run free there. It’s proof that California has always been a land of fanciful living creatures.)
The National Park Service has the best information on all the different ways to get to the Channel Islands.
For our tour of the closest island, Anacapa, we used a company called Island Packers.
The boat trip/tour was about $45 per person. We were relieved to find comfortable seats out on deck, since Anacapa is about an hour each way from the shore. Our guides were well-educated and insightful about the region, full of great stories and information about conservation and restoration efforts on the islands.
For instance, we learned about the coastal rangers’ daily battle with iceplant, a flowering creeper (seen in the photo above, in its pre-flowering state). Iceplant long ago blew over here in seed form from mainland gardens and has proven not only invasive but lethal to less hardy, indigenous plants.
Anacapa is surrounded by cliffs and the only way to get there from your anchored boat is to climb 154 stairs. Wear grippy, comfortable shoes — and maybe even splurge on socks. From the island’s cliffs you can see clear teal water chock full of “trees” of seaweed, the island’s lighthouse, brown pelicans and sea lions, curving rock formations, and several of the other Channels.
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See also
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