{"id":1142,"date":"2011-07-25T20:42:38","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T03:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2011-07-25T20:42:54","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T03:42:54","slug":"catalina-with-the-girl-scouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/?p=1142","title":{"rendered":"Catalina with the Girl Scouts"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my previous post<\/a>, I was lucky enough to spend two days and two nights with my niece’s Girl Scout troop in beautiful Catalina!\u00a0 We jumped on the Catalina Express<\/a> and an hour later we were in Avalon.<\/p>\n

The last time I was on a boat to Catalina it was 1998 and we were in the middle of El Nino<\/a>.\u00a0 And the boat was full of 100+ seasick 9th graders.\u00a0 This trip, luckily, was a lot less eventful.<\/p>\n

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Like aunt, like niece–me and Katelyn!<\/em><\/p>\n

The only time I had ever been to Avalon it was at the Catalina Island Marine Institute (CIMI)<\/a> in Toyon Bay<\/a> so I hadn’t been to Avalon before.\u00a0 The town is super cute and I quickly fell in love with it.<\/p>\n

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Welcome to Avalon!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Views of the boat and the island (see the casino in the background? I think I’ll have to check that out next time around because, as you can imagine, there is no “Gambling” Girl Scout badge to be earned, haha)<\/em><\/p>\n

We were too early to check into our hotel so after leaving our luggage at the front desk we went to explore the main drag on foot.<\/p>\n

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Three of the girls…and a giant hamburger.<\/em><\/p>\n

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J…and a giant buffalo.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The girls looking out onto the water<\/em><\/p>\n

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The troop!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Feeling adventurous?<\/em><\/p>\n

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Like I said earlier…like aunt, like niece, am I right? \ud83d\ude09<\/em><\/p>\n

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J being contemplative<\/em><\/p>\n

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We stayed at the Hotel Atwater…it was very cute but the windows and walls were paper thin!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mr. Ning’s…it’s what for dinner.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I had the shrimp egg foo young…I’ve never seen egg foo young served like that before! It was beyond delicious, though.<\/em><\/p>\n

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After dinner we walked around some of the neighborhoods taking in the sights…<\/p>\n

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“No Turkeys Allowed”?!?
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S and B with the mermaid\/man\/cat bench!
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I love this bench<\/em><\/p>\n

We went back to the hotel pretty early to get some rest before the big day of snorkeling…
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Rest? Did I say rest? I meant to say goofing around.<\/em><\/p>\n

We were up bright and early to get to our appointment at Catalina Scuba Luv<\/a> a few blocks away.<\/p>\n

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The girls looking out on Lover’s Cove, our snorkeling destination<\/em><\/p>\n

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Me and Katelyn getting suited up!<\/em><\/p>\n

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S and her giant flippers<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mom and daughter in wetsuits<\/em><\/p>\n

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The clouds were parting just as we were walking to the snorkeling site, so cool!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Lover’s Cove<\/em><\/p>\n

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Following our snorkel guide down the steps<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mom and daughter in wetsuits again but this time *with* their masks on<\/em><\/p>\n

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Hot, I know.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Much better.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The group! Katelyn, Judith, B, S, J, the snorkel guide guy, and me<\/em><\/p>\n

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It wasn’t easy getting out of the water as Katelyn is demonstrating above<\/em><\/p>\n

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The group post-dive<\/em><\/p>\n

Since the girls were already soaked we decided to stop off at the little beach to let them do some swimming<\/p>\n

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S taking a dive off a floating platform<\/em><\/p>\n

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Katelyn’s cannonball!<\/em><\/p>\n

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S post-swim<\/em><\/p>\n

After getting cleaned up we decided to head out on foot again to check out the town.<\/p>\n

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An adorable dog in a golf cart! So cute.<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u00a0 decided we were ready to take or exploring to the next level so decided to take a little trolley around the island (yes, we were those people).<\/p>\n

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The girls gave the trolley a thumbs-up! Or at least Katelyn did.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Me and my fabulous niece!<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the stops on the trolley route was the Wrigley Memorial Garden…it was totally news to me that Mr. Wrigley, as in Wrigley gum and Chicago Cubs Wrigley Field, had a huge part in the preservation efforts on Catalina Island and for that reason his memorial and a beautiful garden are located there.<\/p>\n

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Cacti, cacti everywhere!<\/em><\/p>\n

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The girls were fascinated by the heart-shaped cactus (and apparently so was I)<\/em><\/p>\n

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The mosaic ceiling on Wrigley’s memorial<\/em><\/p>\n

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Judith down below!<\/em><\/p>\n

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More trolley fun…me, Katelyn and J<\/em><\/p>\n

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Maureen and Judith<\/em><\/p>\n

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B enjoying the ride<\/em><\/p>\n

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J acting like a goofball<\/em><\/p>\n

We also did our share of shopping (because there ain’t that much to do!)<\/p>\n

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Hahaha, these two crack me up!<\/em>
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Yes I told them to jump in the golf cart. But they did so willingly (as you can tell from their facial expressions)<\/em><\/p>\n

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View of the island near sunset<\/em><\/p>\n

Our final morning we were there Judith, Katelyn and I took a long walk up, up, up a steep staircase to get a good view of the bay.<\/p>\n

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Katelyn and Judith enjoying a scrumptious chai tea before jumping on the Catalina Express back home<\/em><\/p>\n

I was so so so so happy when Judith invited me along to the troop’s Catalina trip, it’s so nice being able to still be connected with the girls and the troop in the two years since moving up here!\u00a0 And I really miss those stinkers a ton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was lucky enough to spend two days and two nights with my niece’s Girl Scout troop in beautiful Catalina!\u00a0 We jumped on the Catalina Express and an hour later we were in Avalon. The last time I was on a boat to Catalina it was 1998 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,37,11,8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-judith","category-long-beach","category-not-san-francisco","category-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lisankevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}