Homer's Travels: Installment #11: Santa Cruz Island 2003

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Installment #11: Santa Cruz Island 2003

The next installment is a slight deviation from past installments in that it really wasn't a vacation. In March 2003, the wife and I helped chaperon a group of students on a field trip to Santa Cruz island, one of the Channel Islands.

We took a boat out to the island . Once we arrived we hiked the two - three miles to the house we were going to spend the night at. The house is owned by the Nature Conservancy. Everything is solar powered. There were semi-truck sized solar arrays that the conservancy received from the Navy. The Navy has a radar facility on the island and when then upgraded to larger solar arrays they donated the old ones to the nature conservancy. We had about 24 students along with 6 chaperons. We had a great time with the kids. The first night was mostly S'mores, eating, and other fun stuff.

The next morning, after a chilly night, we got up and walked down along the farm buildings that were built by the original owners of the land (The solar panels are the three small gray rectangles in the lower middle of the picture) . Some of the buildings were built in the 1880- 1890s. The long grass of the meadow that surrounded the small family chapel glistened in the morning dew (The chapel is in the upper right of the complex out by itself).

After breakfast we did a short hike to some waterfalls and had fun climbing the rocks in the area before we headed back to the beach to catch our ride back to the mainland. It was a fun little excursion. A few more pictures here.

1 comment:

  1. oh santa cruz--what a gorgeous island. i am jealous of you guys--i've had a lot of fun there.
    ps--i'm back up and running. and supermotivated.

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