Melody planned a great trip out to Catalina Island in California right after I graduated. What a great gift to give. Well we were extremely excited to embark on a trip neither of us have been on, and didn’t really know what to expect. This is where our first surprise came into play, a ferry to Balboa Island. The GPS told us that we were expecting to arrive at our destination in 30 minutes, but we didn’t know that this water taxi was going to be taking us to our final destination. Melody was so excited as you can see!

And the next two are a view of another ferry as well as ours, with two cars stowed.

We made it to Balboa Island and I saw a lot of interesting things to photo graph. I love this rustic arcade sign, and the blue skies.

A picture of Melody’s travel tag that she bought in Taiwan.

And some pretty cool patterns I saw on the way to the Catalina Express, our chartered boat.

Just a fisherman, walking to his fishing location.

When we arrive at Avalon, a taxi was there to pick us up. But to our surprise, the city was only 1 square mile big, and we didn’t need it. I felt like we got hustled cause it was a 10 dollar ride to somewhere we could have walked to in 10 minutes. Oh well, but to you future Catalina visitors, just walk to your hotel. This is the Aurora hotel, and its sunroof.

Next, we decided to explore the quaint little town a little more.

But after a short while, and a visit to the tourist office we decided to hike up through the mountains of Catalina, but only a short 10 mile hike of course. So pre-hike, I took a photo of my energetic girlfriend.

Well, there was not much to see up top but this panorama that I took of the mountain range.

And after our hike, we visited the Wrigley Memorial.

And after that, the botanical gardens of Catalina.

So, Catalina has a limit on the number of cars on shore. This requires the residents to either acquire golf carts for transportation, or miniature cars like this.

A view of Avalon and its houses.

This cool little fish and chips shop wasn’t open, probably due to the gustly winds. But this hole pier, which isn’t that big, was painted this color.

For drinking only!

This is our Catalina tour bus. It took us around the skyline of the island. Not very scenic, but a lot of cool things to see.

Like this bison, which were moved to the islands for a movie. We also saw a bald eagle from far away.

The destination of this tour? The Catalina airport.

Flxible, the maker of our cool tour bus.

And this annoying sea bird, trying to steal our food was dripping its saliva on us. Very unkosher.