Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Santa Catalina Island

On Saturday, we went to Catalina Island via the Catalina Express. Santa Catalina Island was purchased by William Wrigley, Jr. (Wrigley Gum) in 1919. He dedicated himself to preserving and promoting the island. He did a pretty good job. The island is a tourist hot spot and relatively untainted.

During our CAT ride, we passed by the Queen Mary.

Avalon Harbor









He was a quick little bugger and very crabby. He kept snapping his claws at us. We chased him around for about 15 minutes.



Our tour bus. Retro sounds cool, but in practice really isn't. It's not that much fun to roll across the hills on dirt roads in a rickety old bus.

Flexible is spelt wrong. The company had to spell the name wrong in order to get the patent. At the time, another company already had the rights to the correct spelling.





Shark Harbor. There are sharks, but the harbor got its name from the rock formation on the beach.

So you don't forget what we look like.




The Wrigley's Arabian Horse Ranch.



The horses were gorgeous. Horseback is a very popular way for the locals to get around the island.

The Wrigley's newest venture, a vineyard.

Acorn Woodpeckers. We had never seen so many together at once. They were everywhere.



Catalina Airport.

Wild Buffalo. We also saw deer and a fox, but those pictures didn't turn out too stellar.

The residents of Avalon never get to see the sunset. It falls behind the mountains relatively early in the evening.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How big are those acorn woodpeckers?

The island looks lovely. Do people live on the island?

Brittany and Matt said...

The woodpeckers are about 9 inches long. Yes, people do live on the island.