Get Off The Couch — Catalina Island

Our Cookie Jar experiment #1 and Catalina Island Weekend

My wife and I found ourselves in a rut several years ago. It happens; maybe it’s happened to you. The big excitement of the week was getting supplies at Target. We hadn’t ventured far from home; I hadn’t ventured far from the couch.

We both agreed to fix this, saying we would take some day trips or overnight weekend trips. A couple of months went by, and we still hadn’t taken a single trip anywhere and didn’t even do anything interesting locally.

I’m not sure where the cookie jar experiment idea came from. Most likely something I read in the travel section of our newspaper. But the idea was to write down places to visit on pieces of paper, put them in a box (we used a cookie jar), pull one out each weekend, and then go there. No backing down.

There were rules to this game — if it was a game.

• There were 12 pieces of paper, and each of us got 6; we could write down any place, thing, museum, or attraction we wanted to visit. Six were my ideas, and six were my wife’s ideas.
• The places had to be within a day’s drive of our house.
• It couldn’t be any place we had been to before; the idea was to see new places.
• We didn’t share what our picks were, it will be a surprise.
• And most important, once a piece of paper was withdrawn from the cookie jar, there was no backing down; we were going, couch be damned.

We decided once a week was too ambitious and set the bar much lower. Once a month, we said.

Where did we go? You have to wait for future articles for that. But today, I’m writing about Catalina Island, our first pick. A choice made by my wife. I thought she cheated by making her pieces of paper larger so they would be easier to pick. She was going to hate my choices.

So Catalina Island it was.

You could do Catalina in a day by getting up at 5:00 am, driving to Dana Point to catch the first ferry, spending half a day, then catching the ferry back, and getting home in the dark. We opted to spend the night instead. A good choice, as it turned out.

The Catalina Express Ferry makes 30 trips a day, leaving from three ports, Dana Point, Long Beach, and San Pedro. Dana Point is closer to San Diego, so the tickets purchased and the hotel booked was ready for our first Cookie Jar adventure.

I knew a few things about Catalina Island. It’s 22 miles off the Southern California coast, part of the Channel Islands, and Natalie Woods died in Avalon Harbor under mysterious circumstances. Strange thing for me to remember.

We had a lovely ride over, around an hour. I’m a sailor and love boats and ships; I was on a boat out to sea, and it was a beautiful day. This is okay, even if it was my wife’s pick, I’m thinking.

When we arrived, it was too early to check in to the Hotel, so we did some sightseeing.

The first thing we saw was a statue of Old Ben, a famous bull California Sea Lion. Old Ben had become very tame and would do tricks for the tourist for a fish snack. In some ways, he was a precursor to the Sea Lion acts found at Sea World and other attractions today. He was even featured in a film from 1914 called The Sea Nymphs, starring Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand.

Sandys kissed Old Ben goodbye, and we continued. No, I didn’t misspell my wife’s name; it’s Sandys, with an (s). I think it’s a family's last name used as her first name. Confuses the hell out of everyone. I think she likes it that way.

We rented a Limo to continue our sightseeing. There are very few automobiles on Catalina and the waitlist to bring one onto the Island is 14 years. Everyone drives golf carts, especially around Avalon.

I was still Geocaching at this time, another hobby now in the hobby graveyard. But found several very interesting Geocaches on the Island.

My wife wanted to visit the shops, in other words, go shopping. She is very good at this activity and would win a gold medal if it were an Olympic event. I hate shopping. I don’t use the word hate often, but here I’ll use it with an exclamation point. It just occurred to me, if my wife wrote down Outlet Shopping Malls on one of her pieces of paper, I’m jumping off the roof. Jeff Bezo is my hero; if I need anything, Amazon brings it to my door.

George Shatto purchased the Island for $200,000 and is credited with building the first hotel. He envisioned a resort city, but George defaulted on his loan. There were various changes in ownership including the Banning Brothers. But, the beginnings of a nice resort were underway.

Then in 1915, a fire destroyed half the town including all six hotels and several clubs. Eventually, the chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. bought out nearly every share-holder until he owned the controlling interest in the Santa Catalina Island Company.

He continued to invest millions and built the Catalina Casino in 1929. Always looking for ways to promote his Island paradise, he moved the Chicago Cubs' spring training to Catalina in 1921. He was the owner of the Cubs. He built a mansion on the hillside overlooking the bay. It’s a beautiful bed and breakfast today.

We had dinner at the El Galleon, and the sailor in me was drawn to the name. Although El Galeon, the Spanish tall ships have one “l” not two, who’s quibbling? The restaurant was very eclectic with lots of antiques and interesting things covering every inch of space. With a few nautical things, but not living up to its name. The food was average and the service was outstanding. I was hungry at this point and would have eaten the napkins.

We stayed at the Aurora Hotel, which was excellent. The rooftop patio had wonderful views of the bay and hillsides. Rooms were spacious, not something Avalon is known for and the continental breakfast hit the spot. Even the coffee was good.

What surprised me most about Catalina was that it felt more like a Mediterranean seaside village than California. While only 22 miles away, it felt like you were on the other side of the world.

This was a great weekend and a great pick by my wife. The Cookie Jar experiment was off to a great start. And maybe this turned out to be a good idea after all. I would even go so far as to recommend you consider your own cookie jar experiment.