Channel Islands National Park

Channel Islands works as a day trip from Los Angeles, starting with the drive to Ventura Harbor and the hour long boat to Santa Cruz Island. The crossing is half the experience, with dolphins on the bow, sea lions packed on the harbor buoys, and blue whales feeding in the channel from July through September. The islands have no cars, no lodges, and no food for sale, just cliff trails, sea caves, kelp forests, and the island fox, found nowhere else on Earth and unafraid of people, a sighting you would almost never get in the wild. Late winter brings wildflowers and migrating gray whales.

Discovery Pick

Why this one matters

Isolation is the whole story. Cut off from the mainland for millennia, the islands became the Galapagos of North America, with 145 plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. The island fox tells it best. Down to fifteen animals per island in 2000, it is now back in the thousands, the fastest mammal recovery in the history of the Endangered Species Act.

Channel Islands National Park

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