Los Angeles And Catalina Island

Dan and I split up on Friday to enjoy various activities. While Dan stayed in Los Angeles I drove down to the port of San Pedro, about 26 miles from where we're staying near Beverly Hills, where I caught an early ferry to Catalina Island. Catalina Island is about 22 miles off the coast. It takes the fast ferry about an hour to reach the port of Avalon on Catalina Island. We visited the island a couple of years ago when our cruise ship, the Celebrity Century stopped there. Catalina is a beautiful resort destination that offers many leisure-time activities. On the ferry there were sport fishermen, hikers, a boy scout troop from Redondo Beach, California, and lots of people who just wanted to escape the city for a day of sunbathing, etc. I went because I wanted to go scuba diving in the Casino Point Underwater Park, located right at Avalon. I did enjoy a dive there in 2014, but I did not have my camera so I was unable to take underwater photos. This time I brought my camera rig and I enjoyed two separate dives. The underwater environment in Southern California features kelp forests, a unique and beautiful type of vegetation. There is also a wonderful variety of fish and other wildlife that inhabit the kelp forests. Meantime Dan was at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, enjoying another type of beauty: paintings by great masters such as Sargent, Eakins, Rembrandt and Gauguin. When I returned to LA later, we then drove again to West Hollywood for dinner, and had a great meal at Robata. -Jim