On our last day on the Island we finally made it up to the rooftop terrace of our guesthouse:
Pretty great view! We were sorry we hadn't gone up earlier, when the sun was out.
Anyway we thought we would have the Island to ourselves once the weekend was over, but instead a cruise ship arrived with three shuttle boats continually bringing passengers to shore. Clearly it was time to get out of Dodge.
Leo got good shot of this osprey hanging around the pier
Heck, why don't we call him the Bird of the Day!
Our last task as we waited for our ferry was to try to get a picture of Clifornia's State marine fish, the Garibaldi damselfish
Which was swimming around the dock. Fun fact: the Garibaldi is named after Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi's red shirt though the fish is clearly bright orange. Fun fact 2: California has both a marine state fish and freshwater state fish (the golden trout, clearly golden) while Canada has only recently got its act together and nominated a national bird, and the wrong one! (The whiskey jack, not the loon which is our real national bird . . . Its on a coin already for heavenssake, like the beaver!)
So long Catalina Island with cruise ship in background
On the trip over the ferry was packed, every seat was taken, but on the return we pretty much had the outdoor seating to ourselves.
Connie scanning for shearwaters
From the ferry terminal in Long Beach, we walked a few blocks to the Enterprise office to pick up our rental car and drove 8 miles to Sunset Beach and our optimistically named motel, the Oceanview. It turned out to be more like the Pacific Highwayview, but in fact, fom our window, in a gap between the buildings across the highway, I could see some blue water.
It's an interesting area of cheap motels, dive bars, diners and liquor stores. But if you cross th highway and go one block, there's the beach, empty in January, and stretching from Oregon to the tip of Baja California.
Let's end this there, with a sunset on Sunset Beach.
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