Suebob's Red Stapler

Sunset over Santa Cruz Island. It calls to me!

I bolted awake at 6 a.m. Sunday morning with one burning need: to go to Santa Cruz Island. Weird, right? Every day when I walk the dog by the beach, I see the Channel Islands, just 20 miles off the coast, and wish I was there.

I usually have some reason I can’t go – some appointment that keeps me on land for at least part of the day, and it is a whole-day trip. But on the Sunday of a three-day weekend, I thought I might be able to skip church, delay mom’s grocery shopping, and escape. You go out in the morning, spend about four hours on the island, then return around sunset.

The islands are utterly undeveloped and deserted. No visitors’ center, no gift shop, no Starbucks. Crazy, I know. If you go, you have to take everything you need, including water, and pack all your trash home.

The pull for me is to really, really escape civilization for a little while, to see some wildlife you can never see from shore, and to go to a quiet, magical, natural world that is both so close and so far.

I packed my day pack with some warm clothes, lemonhead candies (to head off sea-sickness, a trick my mom taught me) water and granola bars. I dropped Goldie off at Mom’s and headed to the boat, praying they would have an open spot for me.

$56 later, I was in possession of a ticket on the Island Adventure, one of the Island Packers’ gleaming white steel-hulled double-decker catamarans that make almost daily trips to Channel Islands National Park.

We rode out of the harbor on calm seas, about 40 of us, most sitting inside the cabin, but a few of us heartier souls out in the morning breeze – me, a group of German college students from UC Davis, an aging hippie dude noodling dissonantly on a wooden flute.

As it leaves the harbor, the captain suddenly speeds the boat up to 20 mph, so the wind blowing over the bow gets stiff and cold. They warn you to literally hold on to your hat. (They also inform you “The emergency exits are located wherever there is green or blue liquid.”) I put on a beanie, thick jacket, gloves and scarf.

The winter ocean was almost black and almost waveless as we flew along, the water singing against the metal hull, pelicans and cormorants scattering before us. We made a quick detour to laugh at big, fat sea lions lounging on a buoy, drying their fur in the morning sun.

In an hour, we were at our first island stop, Scorpion Landing, Santa Cruz Island, 19 miles off shore. Almost all of the travelers disembarked, leaving just 10 of us and the crew of four to continue on.

As soon as we pulled out, the able Captain Jimmy announced that he had spotted grey whales – a group of six or seven traveling close together. This is the season when grey whales travel south to feed in the warm lagoons of Baja California.

We watched as the water rippled and roiled and they blew spouts into the air about 1/4 mile from us. I didn’t take any photos, because I knew I wouldn’t get anything good – unless you have a telephoto, you can expect this – shots of lumpy, blue water. It does not do them justice.

They are magical, no doubt about it. I get awe-struck and almost prayerful, watching their power and elegance.

We got off the boat a few miles down the coast at the long white dock at Prisoner’s Harbor, which in days past had served as part of a cattle and sheep ranching operation.

The hiking group took off one way and I took off, alone, in the other direction. For me, the islands are about being outside in a quiet, quiet place, alone. That peace is something I crave and don’t often find – to be in a truly quiet, natural setting.

I began to climb on the trail. And climb. And climb. Finally I came to a lovely picnic spot and stopped for some water and a banana.

Suddenly I heard voices. Dang, a couple had come up the road with their camping gear and were stopped by the side of the road, eyeing my picnic table, the only one around.

I packed up and began hiking up, and up again. I kept thinking the trail would level out just around the next curve, but 95 percent of it was climbing. I hadn’t hiked uphill for a long time and I kept stopping to catch my breath or to remove another layer of clothing.

The couple was hot on my tail, usually a couple hundred yards behind me. I was determined to pull away from them, so I kept climbing.

After about 45 minutes of climbing, I found a path to the campground. I went partway down the path and then stopped to lay down in the soft green island grass.

Soon, the young couple came along, schlepping all of their camping gear. They told me they were spending the night. They had a brand-new tent still in the wrapping, and they looked remarkably fresh and happy for people who had just carried all their gear and a few gallons of water (there’s no water on the island) up a mountain.

Meanwhile, I was whupped. I watched the couple disappear down the path, then headed back down the mountain. On the way back, I was captivated by the sight of an endangered island fox eating holly berries by the side of the road. I got a couple blurry pictures. He’s that dark-colored spot on the left side of the road.

I saw the famous island scrub jays, a species found only on the islands, and cause for birdwatchers from all over the world to visit:

I ambled around the island a little more, avoiding the hills:

The purple-flowered lupine bushes reminded me of my old botany teacher, Dr. Shirley Pimentel, who did her doctoral work on those lovely legumes:

At 2:30, it was time to get back on the boat and head for home.

I stood on the deck the whole time again, freezing cold and smiling madly, watching the common dolphins race the boat, peeling off to flip and spin in the air. I could have sat in the cabin, but I didn’t want to miss a thing.

I love modern life. I can go pretty much anywhere in the world, forearmed with knowledge that I won’t be sharing my lodgings with scorpions unless the internet says I will.

Scorpions? Seriously. My grandparents told tale of a road trip to northern Mexico in the 1920s where their hotel room walls were covered with creepy, crawly, poison scorpions. I can’t even sleep without an eye mask and the perfect pillow. Imagine the comforting night’s sleep I’d get while sharing my room with poisonous insects.

I had my own pre-internet hotel/motel adventures, as I’m sure most people did. Tell me your worst lodging stories in the comments section. I love to hear them.

I remember a cheap motel in Denver that stank so badly of cigarette smoke that when I took my nightgown out the next night 500 miles down the road, a wave of rank grey smell came floating out with it.

Or the formerly quaint, now kinda Shining-level scary hotel in California’s Gold Country where there were 2 options: a room RIGHT above the bar, where Bob Seger music blasted at about 110 decibels, or a room that had apparently not been aired out since Eisenhower was president. It also had a bed that was on bedsprings…let me find a photo, because most people in the modern era have never seen this…

Ha. The only photo I could find shows the bedstead being used as a BBQ. But you get the idea:

Photo by Aroid. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Every time my partner (who was in a great deal of trouble, because he had promised to make hotel reservations and hadn’t, leaving us stuck with the only available rooms in town) or I moved an inch, the metal springs creaked out a loud, rusty song.

I could go on…but seriously, traveling was scary. You pulled into a town, took a peek around and tried to determine from the motel’s facade and general state of appearance whether you were going to find a clean, comfortable room, or whether a Night of Living Hell awaited you.

And if you did have a terrible stay, what could you do? Argue over the bill? Tell all your friends that if they ever happened to be in Salina, Kansas that they should avoid the Dew Drop Inn? (No idea whether there is a Dew Drop Inn in Salina or if it is habitable. Just exampling.)

So I’m so glad to have the internet, with its passionate travelers, to give me an advance peek into potential lodgings. TripAdvisor.com is my choice of review sites, but Yelp will work, too. I don’t know why I usually use Trip Advisor for hotels and Yelp to find great places to eat…it’s just how I do.

I pay it back, too, posting reviews and photos of places I stay and restaurants. As every statistician knows, sample size matters, so the more the merrier.

On this trip, thanks to Trip Advisor’s “Best Value” button, we found two great deals on two humble but clean motels. I can tell you that Mrs. Lin at the Sundown Inn in Morro Bay runs a tight ship. She owns the place and does everything, including housekeeping, and I have to thank God that she’s a much better housekeeper than I am. It was CLEAN. For $49 a night, I was pretty skeptical, but I’m a convert now.

The internet has taken some of the adventure and romance out of travel, for sure. True surprises are harder and harder to find. But it has also taken out scorpions and cigarette reek, so, for me, it’s a fair trade.

The night before I was leaving for a trip with my two friends, my mom asked “Are you packed?”

“No, I’ll do it later,” I said.

“When are you meeting CC and Ish?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. I knew we were leaving on Tuesday – we had talked about that when we made motel reservations about six weeks before. But we hadn’t discussed the trip since.

Mom shook her head. “Your dad would have a heart attack,” she said.

She’s right. In spite of Dad’s insistence on planning every detail of a trip weeks in advance, or maybe because of it, I prefer to leave things hanging as much as possible and just see what happens.

I learned my lesson when I went to Kauai for 8 days. I got the Kauai guidebook. I studied every map and memorized every attraction. I knew which restaurants were good and which weren’t – according to the book.

When I got to Kauai, I had an agenda. I was determined to stick to my plans, come hell or high water. This explains how I found myself drenched with rain, fishing in glass-slick mud that came up to my knees, trying to retrieve my flip-flops that had been sucked off my feet in the thick red goo. The guidebook said that the trail led to an unmissable scenic spot, and dammit, I was going to see the scenic spot, even if I slid on my butt all the way down the muddy trail to the ocean and then had to grip tree trunks to keep my balance on my way back up.

That trip broke me of travel planning. Now I do the minimum. When I went to Oaxaca, Mexico for 3 weeks, I didn’t read anything about it before I went there. I knew it was historic and beautiful and had an airport. That was enough for me. People started telling me about cool stuff to see even before I landed there. No guidebook necessary.

Costa Rica was the same way. My BFF CC went before me and found a place to stay. Then we bumbled our way across the country, clueless and enjoying every minute.

I like to travel anywhere. I just enjoy waking up somewhere different and going out to find out what it is all about. I try to pack well and to remember the things I need, but if I don’t, I can make do or buy what I need.

I talked to CC and Ish that night. We made a plan to meet up at 10 am. That was all the plans we needed.