When Lea’s contract was up with the Indian Health Service hospital in Winslow, the base from which we took excursions into Flagstaff, Sedona, and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, we decided to head for California. Our plan was to drive up the west coast from San Diego to Vancouver, British Columbia. We drove down to the misnamed Montezuma Castle National Monument, headed across Arizona on 260 and 85A to the old mining town of Jericho and Prescott. Finally, we got on Interstate 10 and headed through the gates into golden California.
We had hoped to make it to Joshua tree National Park before nightfall but it grew dark and we were tired. We stopped for petrol in Desert Center where the attendant told us that we could pitch our tent for the night. The next day we drove to Joshua Tree and set up camp. After staying for a couple of days we left. It was more of a rock climbing park then we expected and we were not rock climbers or even interested in rock climbing. We drove through San Bernardino picking up some food, including several large bags of pistachios, at a Walmart along the way. Next we drove down to Palm Springs. Eventually we ended up at Lake Perris State Recreational Area near Riverside where we pitched our tent for the night.
The next day we headed into Los Angeles. Our plan was to go to Santa Catalina for four days of tenting and hiking before we headed south to San Diego. We drove to Long Beach without a hitch—traffic was light by California standards and along the way we saw the ruins brought by the earthquake of 1989--and caught the ferry over to Santa Catalina. After arriving in Avalon, Catalina’s major city, we walked up the valley past the old Chicago Cubs spring practise baseball field and past the school and pitched our our tent in a nearby campground. We were one of only two campers there. The other was a graduate Social Anthropology student from one of the colleges of the University of London. When we checked in we were immediately warned about the wild pigs that came out at night and how “mean” they were.
We had no idea how scary Santa Catalina’s wild pigs were until we went to bed that first evening on the island. Around midnight we heard them scavenging around our tent. We were so afraid of them—they sounded fierce—that we didn’t get out of the tent until morning. Thankfully, I was still in my forties and my plumbing was consequently in good shape. Of course, there was also the empty bottle method that could be used in a pinch.
The first hike we did on Santa Catalina was up a 2000 plus mountain to the west of the campsite. We were told that on a clear day you could see Long Beach and Los Angeles from the top. We were not able to see either when we got to the top of the mountain but we could not have care in the least. The views of that part of the island were spectacular.
Also at the top of the mountain was a road along which the electric golf cart vehicles for which Catalina is famous for sometimes ran. Autos were largely verboten on the island at the time. We turned east toward Avalon and within a few hours was back in Santa Catalina’s largest “city”. On the way down we passed the famous Santa Catalina casino. Ahead of us while still descending we saw the Catalina desalinisation plant. As soon as we got to Avalon’s city centre we stopped into a great and inexpensive Mexican restaurant where we ate on several occasions during our stay on the island and got some of their excellent burritos.
We hated to leave Catalina with its wonderful weather and incredible scenery but we had to. Lea made plans to attend a medical conference at the Hotel Del on Coronado Island in San Diego. So we got the ferry back to Long Beach, got into the Camaro, and drove south to San Diego.
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