One of the best things about the islands is how easy it is to see wildlife. We chose to focus on sea kayaking, which was totally new and horrifying to me, but we also went on a long day-hike across the island and snorkeled in one of the coves (also new, also horrifying). There’s even a couple backpacking opportunities if you want to be on-brand and stick to the backpacking. We chose to go to Santa Cruz Island for the kayaking and unique island foxes, but there’s plenty to do on all the islands and they’re all beautiful. There’s a whole lot of stuff to do on these islands.
That’s why I’ve made this guide almost insufferably detailed – I expect people to skip giant chunks of it, but when you want to start planning a trip here, you know where to find all the information. It also didn’t help that we wanted to go ocean kayaking independently, without a group tour, which was actually pretty hard to figure out because there wasn’t a lot of information about how to do it. Every time I would start planning a trip here, I would back out because of the price (it’s a tad high) or the time commitment (you’ll need more than two days).
We knew we wanted to go to all eight National Parks in the state, but I just couldn’t get my act together for this park.
Channel Islands National Park is a place that always intimidated me when we lived in California.
