You’ll stop next at Santa Rosa Island—almost as isolated as San Miguel, but more visually and ecologically diverse. You’ll take a 15-mile round-trip to Lobo Canyon, a very remote and beautiful place where unfit tourists rarely go because of the distance.

You’ll spend our third day on Santa Cruz Island, where the topography is the most diverse, with wooded hillsides, steep canyons, vast grasslands, and big volcanic bluffs. You’ll see the top of Picacho Diablo (Devil’s Peak), the island’s highest peak at 2434', where you’ll enjoy boundless views of the Pacific.

Colorful historic buildings dot the Santa Cruz Island landscape: adobe ranch houses, barns, blacksmith and saddle shops, wineries, and a chapel. At one time, a dozen villages housed nearly 2,000 Native Americans of the Chumash tribe; remnants of their civilization are visible in thousands of shell middens on the island.

Hiking and walking through the inland valleys, you’ll hear the endemic island scrub jay screech loudly as it flutters from oak to oak, and you’ll see tiny island fox seeking fruits and berries along streams gurgling their way to the sea. You’ll pad quietly along single-track trails, leaving no trace behind while you enjoy these natural splendors.

Santa Cruz Island has the best sea kayaking in world, thanks to its countless sea caves and amazing marine mammal population. As you glide through kelp beds, the sea lions will follow your kayaks, rolling and curveting in the water. The marine life surrounding Santa Cruz is amazing— porpoises, dolphins, and whales can often be seen feeding in the rich kelp forests near the shore. Harbor seals and California sea lions haul out at isolated coves to warm themselves. Ragged cliffs and offshore rocks and tidepools support huge colonies of breeding sea birds, shellfish, crustaceans, and other shoreline plants and animals.

You’ll visit the world’s largest sea cave, flashlights in hand. Breathtaking Painted Cave, named for its colorful rocks, lichens, and algae, is nearly a quarter mile long and 100 feet wide, with an entrance that soars 160 feet. At the back of the cave, you’ll see perhaps a hundred sea lions, barking madly to keep us from coming too near.

The Channel Islands are an experience in untouched natural splendor, with unspoiled beaches, wonderfully single-track trails through pristine wilderness, and shores teeming with seals, sea lions, and birdlife.

Seeing the Channel Islands up close is a unique experience. This area of the world has never been geared for tourism, and the payoff to you is unspoiled beaches, secluded lagoons, awe-inspiring marine wildlife, and abundant, beautiful endemic plants and animals.

Onboard and on the islands, you’ll enjoy the ultimate in peaceful relaxation—there are no crowds, no lines, no tourist traps—just walking, hiking, kayaking, fishing, sunbathing, whale-watching, and endless photo-ops— a unique, unforgettable get-away weekend of exercise and fun.

Sixteen miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, Channel Islands National Park is the country’s remotest, least-visited natural preserve—with unspoiled beaches to stroll, teeming wildlife to observe, secluded lagoons to explore, spectacular inland scenery, and many miles of beautiful single-track trails that pass unique plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.

You’ll board the ship Saturday, October 21 between 7-10 P.M. At midnight you’ll leave port and head out to sea for the Channel Islands. In the morning, you’ll awaken to a wonderfully hot and tasty breakfast cooked to order. Each day, our chartered ship will treat us to an entirely new adventure on a very different island—for sun bathing, casual walk, or a brisk hike— take your choice. It’s your vacation. You set the pace and distances. We provide the Channel Islands Nation Park authorized guides, naturalist, and carefully planned routes. In the afternoons, you’ll kayak, swim or snorkel or explore more trails, then enjoy a gourmet barbeque dinner and take in the kind of sunset found only at the Channel Islands.

One of the world’s last remaining untouched and undeveloped natural areas, the Channel Islands National Park and Marine Sanctuary comprise five islands in a roughly north-south, 160-mile chain off the coast of Southern California.

The Channel Islands are an experience in untouched natural splendor, with hundreds of miles of unspoiled coastline, and unique wildlife species found nowhere else on earth. Each island has its own charm, lore, fauna, birdlife, history, and geography. Our trip will include the most secluded of the park’s islands: San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz.

You’ll start our trip at San Miguel—the least-visited Channel Island, with less than 100 visitors per year—we will likely have the island almost entirely to ourselves. Cuyler’s Harbor, where our ship will moor, is beautiful and dramatic-looking, with long, white sandy beaches—a perfect place to begin our 15-mile round trip outing from the harbor to Point Bennett, the wildest and most exposed part of the island. On the way, you’ll cross the lush grasses of the island tablelands, and a unique—ghost forest—formed by sand castings of plant roots and trunks—the plants are long gone, but the eerie stone replicas remain. Of Point Bennett, it is often said that visitors will never forget first hearing, then seeing more than 50,000 seals, sea lions, and pups lounging on the beaches calling out to each other in thunderous chants.