Favorite Son's Spiel : Touring Catalina

This morning we ate breakfast at Jack’s Country Kitchen and then headed off to start our jeep tour of Catalina at 9:30 am. We all buckled in the jeep and we set off with our driver and tour guide, Ron. I couldn’t help thinking of the tour jeeps in Jurassic Park as we started the tour. Ron took us around the different areas of the island, telling us the history of different buildings and the wildlife. I guess there’s some sort of invasive plant that has taken over the area causing a native plant to become endangered. Ron said they have volunteers rip out the invasive plant in an effort to restore the native plant. Our tour guide also told us there’s a species of fox that lives only on Catalina and the efforts that were taken to prevent their extinction from a disease years earlier. We also got to see a bald eagle and bison on the drive too. After some great views from higher up on the island we headed back into town.

What's on the menu?

Welcome to Catalina Park

The red plant is good and the green is bad

The bald eagle was camera shy

Bison

We had some time to kill before our next adventure, so we looked through some of the shops in town. I spent time looking for a proper souvenir for my best friend, DeRon. Every road trip, I try to find the most unique or odd gift to give him. After perusing a few shops, I think I found a worthy gift.

After shopping, we headed to the pier to go on a glass bottom boat tour to Lover’s Cove to see the marine life. We received a private tour due to being the only group signed up for the 1:45 slot. It was nice to have the entire boat to ourselves with multiple views from the floor and sides of the ship. I don’t remember all the names of the fish, but there were certainly a bunch of them once we threw feed at them. We even saw some fish jump out of water to eat the food. Our captain had a full supply of jokes that would make my Dad proud. After we’d seen all the fish, we headed back to land to get some ice cream at Scoops. After finishing our ice cream, we walked over to the Casino for our last stop of the day.

Shopping

Ice Cream

Too many fish

The Casino isn’t a place of gambling, but a gathering place originally built to be a theater and ballroom for dances. The theater was the first to present films with sound and the ballroom above it is the largest circular ballroom in the world. We took the Behind the Scenes tour in which we visited the original backstage areas of the theater including men's and women’s dressing rooms and even saw the original projectors used for film screenings. The ballroom used to play to big band music and could fit 250 dancing couples on its floor. After the tour, we ate dinner at Antonio’s Pizzeria which encouraged us to throw the complementary peanut shells on the floor. Dinner was delicious and afterwards we headed back to our hotel for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll conclude our road trip by going to the Catalina Island Museum and possibly some hiking.