{"id":285,"date":"2006-07-22T11:17:17","date_gmt":"2006-07-22T16:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/285"},"modified":"2006-07-22T11:17:17","modified_gmt":"2006-07-22T16:17:17","slug":"for-a-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/285","title":{"rendered":"For A Friend&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Postcards from Catalina Island&#8230;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0001.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">This is how you get to Catalina.&nbsp; They have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catalinaexpress.com\/catalinaJet.php\">regular jet-catamaran boats<\/a>  to and from the island, and they are comfortable and fast.&nbsp; Even on a fairly rough sea you don&#8217;t feel much.&nbsp;&nbsp; But the sea was very calm on the trip out and back.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0002.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">At the entrance to Avalon harbor.&nbsp; At the very top of the hill is, I&#8217;m told, the Wrigley Mansion.&nbsp; That&#8217;s Wrigley as in the chewing gum.&nbsp; The family owns most of the island I&#8217;m told.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0003.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">One of the streets of Avalon looking west.&nbsp; Most of the island is a wilderness preserve.&nbsp; Avalon is the largest town on the island and it ain&#8217;t big.&nbsp; Everything the people who live on the island need has to be trucked in by boat.&nbsp; But there is a nice tourest zone right at the beach with good food, a few clubs, shopping, and stuff to do.&nbsp; I&#8217;m told there is surfing on the western side of the island.&nbsp; Avalon is on the eastern side, and doesn&#8217;t get much wave action at all.&nbsp; The main activites around Avalon seem to be boating, fishing and scuba diving.&nbsp; My brother and my nephew did the scuba park by the casino while I was wandering around taking pictures.\n<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0004.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Looking from the end of the Avalon Pier, back to Avalon, as the sun sets.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"333\" height=\"500\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0005.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Boats docked in Avalon harbor.&nbsp; Some of those moorings, I&#8217;m told, sell for over a million dollars.&nbsp; Yes&#8230;that&#8217;s a million bucks just to park your boat..<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0006.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Avalon harbor from the Casino.&nbsp; It&#8217;s not a gambling casino, it&#8217;s an old, grand movie theater.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0007.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0008.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">This is the way most folks get around on the island.&nbsp; They don&#8217;t like having cars over there, although you&#8217;ll see some.&nbsp; Mostly people use these golf carts and small lawnmower engine powered light trucks (and I mean light).&nbsp; Instead of car garages, most houses that have them, have golf cart garages or parking spots.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0009.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Many of the nice houses here are built on quite steep hillsides.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" alt=\" \" src=\"\/photos\/cat_0010.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Finally&#8230;the catamaran trip over and back takes you past the Queen Mary, which is now doing duty as a beautiful art deco hotel.&nbsp; If you like anything art deco, you Have to go see the Queen Mary sometime, it is just amazingly beautiful inside (and out&#8230;it&#8217;s a lovely ship from the days of the grand trans-Atlantic ocean liners).&nbsp; On the trip back one of those new cruse line ship things was parked nearby, so I snapped this shot of the two of them together.&nbsp; A contrast in Ocean going eras.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">More postcards later.&nbsp; I&#8217;m on my way now to Portland Oregon for a software developer&#8217;s conference.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll post more photos of my trip when I get settled in up there.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Postcards from Catalina Island&#8230; This is how you get to Catalina.&nbsp; They have regular jet-catamaran boats to and from the island, and they are comfortable and fast.&nbsp; Even on a fairly rough sea you don&#8217;t feel much.&nbsp;&nbsp; But the sea was very calm on the trip out and back. &nbsp; At the entrance to Avalon [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-road-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}