Ventura, Santa Barbara, & The Channel Islands, CA

After all our detours through the desert, we finally made it to the California coast! We find the desert very interesting and beautiful and love all the free camping, but these water views were a welcome change. I guess that’s the cool thing about RVing.

We landed in the town of Ventura on the Rincon Parkway, where we rented a 46X15ft parking space parallel to the ocean. A bit inconvenient since we are 53ft bumper to bumper.

The Rincon is a Ventura County RV Park with 127 parking spaces and is one of the most unique camping experiences we’ve had thus far. On one side are a rock seawall (although we chose a spot in front of an ugly cement wall because it gave us more room to park our truck perpendicular to the camper), the beach, and the ocean. On the other side are Hwy 1, active train tracks, and Hwy 101. So, it’s loud. But we also got to watch dolphins through our windows and step out of the camper to walk on the beach every afternoon.

Ventura, actually named San Buenaventura, is 70 miles NW of LA. It’s a small and laid-back surfing town with tons of SoCal charm.

It originated as a mission community. There were 21 Spanish missions built between San Diego and Sonoma in the late 18 – early 19th centuries to colonize the Pacific Coast and also convert Native Americans to Catholicism and Spanish citizens.

We also visited the Ventura Botanical Gardens. These were interesting for a couple of reasons. First, they don’t focus on native plants, but on plants from other parts of the world with a Mediterranean-like climate. In addition to the SoCal section, there are Chilean, Mediterranean, Australian, and South African Cape sections and to visit all of it is quite a climb up a mile of switchbacks on the side of a mountain.

Second, a 2018 fire destroyed the young gardens. But so much brush was burned that terraces and stone walls from the mission era of the 1700s were uncovered and are now being restored.

After a week on the Rincon, we moved 15 minutes up into the hills to another Ventura County Park. Foster Residence Park was a tiny campground with only ~10 full hookup spots and maybe another 10 tent spots. It was a nice park with nice spacing between sites.

On one of our weekend days, we drove 30 minutes north to walk around Santa Barbara. We had a very good first impression of Sant Barbara. If we had a billion dollars and were looking for a new place to live and our entire family wasn’t on the east coast, SB would go on our list for further investigation! It will definitely go on our list to return one day in an RV and actually stay there.

Historic Downtown Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara’s Stearns Wharf and Chromatic Gate

We also had a fantastic day trip to the Channel Islands. The largest of the 8 island chain is Santa Cruz Island, located 20 miles offshore from Ventura Harbor. You can see the view of Santa Cruz Island from our Rincon Parkway campsite in the cover photo of the blog post. We booked our trip with Island Packers, the National Park Concessionaire.

The trip offered a good chance of seeing wildlife as we crossed the Santa Barbara Channel, a trip to the Painted Cave on the northern shore of Santa Cruz Island, followed by ~3 hours to hike around Prisoners Harbor.

The Painted Cave is one of the longest sea caves in the world. The boat was a 64 ft catamaran and it entered the cave ~100 yards and then reversed back out. The colorful walls come from the types of rock and also lichens and algae growing on them.

The boat ride back to Prisoners Harbor gave us an up-close look at arches and beaches along the northern shore.

The islands are nicknamed the “North American Galapagos” because they are home to 145 species found nowhere else in the world. One of the most famous is the Santa Cruz Island Fox which we got to see on a hike along the Pelican Bay trail.

One the way back across the Channel, the crew (which included a naturalist and a park ranger) spotted two humpback whales. They turned the boat around and went back as close as allowed and let us watch for ~1/2hr. The whales were not that active, maybe sleeping, and just surfacing every 5 minutes to breathe. But we still got to see them and captured a tail flip. What a way to end the day!