Catalina: Cute, but no Porquerolles

In January, the BBC published an article on US parks only accessible by boat or seaplane. Among the list was the Channel Islands, not so terribly far away off the coast of Los Angeles. It sounded like the perfect long weekend, a great extra box to check off in the category of American adventures before we put a bow on our time in the States. Back then, we didn't anticipate that we wouldn't have a single weekend when the two of us would be at home and not traveling for business after the month when those travel plans were made. So here we were, making a rapid turn-around as I unpacked my bags from my most recent week down in Austin only to refill them with gear for the weekend.

Catalina was cute, and also pricey. After getting hit with a $30 price tag for a pair of ice cream cones right after we got off the boat, we started paying a little more attention to our wallets over the weekend. There was still enough to see and do without breaking the bank, though my calves had a few things to say about said low cost (and high elevation change) activities. We found that the 60s Fahrenheit hits far different under the Southern California sun than it does up in the San Francisco Bay. We didn't spot a single one of the legendary bison descended from the pack of 14 brought over for a silent film a century ago, one that didn't even feature them in the final edit. We tried our hands at a round of mini golf, I ate some fantastic lobster roll at the aptly named Lobster Trap, and we somehow didn't find the time to get Nico an authentic straw hat at Luau Larry's.

After a few months of weekly work-related travels, some SoCal voyaging just for us!

The island was cute, but with more tourists and fewer vineyards than its Mediterranean counterpart, Porquerolles. I'm glad we did it, even if it was hardly a chance to catch up on the sleep debt I've been accruing over several months of hopping back and forth between Austin and the Bay. We even made the most of the airport delays with a surprisingly pleasant discovery of a Hefe-Weissbier from the world's oldest continually operated brewery, Weihenstephan. It was lovely to simply have the chance to enjoy a few uninterrupted days in each other's company before either of jobs sent us jetting off once more.