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View from the boat

Catalina makes a great day trip, I would suggest if you are coming from out of town for a short trip don’t go out of your way to go, but if you are a local, visit the Los Angeles area often or plan a longer visit, it’s definitely worth doing once. We took the Catalina Express over, it was a delightfully smooth ride. When we arrived at the island the only plan we had was to see the Catalina Hoedown, a fundraising endeavor they throw annually. With some time to kill before the howdown started we headed over to the tourism bureau and were weighing out our tour and transportation options. The staff was very helpful. With our limited time we were going to go on the glass bottom boat tour but decided with the rodeo starting soon we might not have enough time.  So we decided to visit the Botanical Gardens. The Hoedown was fun, there was a great magician, a Native American dance, and my favorute part, Pistol Packin’ Paula.

Pistol Packin'

The gardens weren’t that interesting to me. But if you are into cactus and not flowers then this is the garden for you. I was assuming since it was a botanical garden that there would be orchids or something colorful and there were none. We headed home early evening so we did not dine in Catalina (aside from the BBQ at the hoedown). It was a lovely day and a great excursion for an otherwise uneventful weekend.

Our pictures and a few videos of Paula can be viewed here