You Can Keep the Thrilling Rides, I’ll Take the Floating Rock

Catalina Island

A few weeks back, we took our children on a small, Summer adventure to Catalina Island.  

The only requirement for our Catalina Island outing was that it had to be something different than we’d ever done before.  After a couple weeks of brainstorming, we’d whittled our options to two finalists: a day at Knott’s Berry Farm (our children had never been) or an afternoon on Catalina Island (twenty-six miles across the sea from where we live).  The cost for either adventure was the same.  

We went for Catalina Island.

Here are five reasons going to Catalina Island (or any similar adventure) might be better for your family than going to (just another) amusement park:

1) You’ll feel like you traveled: Catalina Island is, though nowhere near as exhausting, much like a day of travel.  We handed over our ticket, crossed a soggy dock, then stepped into a boat that, though it only cruised for a total of twenty-six miles, dropped us in another world, floating in the middle of the sea.  Even in small measure, that’s the definition of travel.  Spending time in traffic, fighting for decent parking, then rushing inside to hurry up and wait, sounds to me like just another day of living in Southern California.

2) No lines:  Regardless of what amusement park you throw your money at, you’re bound to spend much of your time (our most precious resource) shuffling from one line to the next…then waiting.  On Catalina Island, we spent our time doing things, and going places.  Even when we were doing nothing, we were looking across the sea at civilization that, from where we stood, could only be pondered. 

About the only thing you’re probably daydreaming while waiting in a sweaty line at an amusement park, is for it to move a little faster.  Not so on Catalina Island.

3) A much needed break from the norm:  It was rewarding to give our children some different, more enlightening things to see; sights unspoiled, rather than factory assembled.  Everywhere I crane my neck at an amusement park, my eyes fall on things recently rolled from an assembly line.  Providing our little ones with natural things to look on, and then discussing what they saw, was an invaluable learning experience (for all of us).  On Catalina Island, our children gazed upon a landscape built by the indelible architect of nature, framing houses and boardwalks constructed without masses of traffic in mind.

4) Quiet cleanliness:  I don’t know about you, but my everyday world doesn’t have nearly enough of either one.  Amusement parks are filled with big, metal behemoths, and screaming, tantrumy children, kicking and crying until they get their way.  The prevailing sound on Catalina Island was the endless rolling of the ocean’s constant whisper.  One day there, away from the cacophony of the city, and I felt like I’d been away for a week.

5) A higher grade of memories:  Why do we take our camera with us whenever we go on vacation (or outside the house, for some)?  Because we want the memories, or at least instantly accessible representations, as though the pictures are proof of how much fun we had.  Choosing Catalina Island, or any outdoor adventure, will help facilitate the building of better memories.  By ushering our children out of their usual, and probably tired, environment, and plugging them into something wholly unfamiliar, we give them more to think about, more to question, and something more specific to recall later, rather than allowing one childhood experience to simply bleed into the next.

A “Catalina Island adventure” doesn’t even have to take place on Catalina Island.  Think about it.  

Don’t do what you think you’re supposed to do, or get caught in the trap of doing what you’ve always done before.  Take an adventure with purpose, and ask yourselves ahead of time; would you rather have this:

OR THIS:

I’m glad we sorted ourselves out on Catalina Island.

Writer Dad

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