Ventura

Lia and I rolled into Ventura on a grey June morning, the kind locals call “May gray” and “June gloom” without any real complaint, and found a downtown that seemed pleasantly unconcerned with impressing anyone. Main Street runs parallel to the ocean past antique shops, taco counters, and the old Mission San Buenaventura, its bells still ringing the hour. After the manicured hush of Malibu down the coast, Ventura felt like a town that actually works for a living — fishing boats, oil derricks offshore, and a downtown full of surfers walking to the water in wetsuits half-zipped.

The Mission and old town

Mission San Buenaventura, founded in 1782 as the last mission established by Junípero Serra, anchors the eastern end of Main Street with thick adobe walls and a quiet garden courtyard. We wandered in for twenty minutes and stayed an hour, reading the small museum’s account of the Chumash people who lived along this coast long before the mission bells arrived. Stepping back onto Main Street afterward, the contrast was immediate: vintage stores, a used bookshop with a cat asleep in the window, and murals painted across the sides of buildings that have clearly seen a few earthquakes.

The pier and the point

Ventura Pier is one of the longest wooden piers in California, and walking its length at dusk, fishermen reeling in mackerel on one side and surfers carving up the break at Ventura Point on the other, is the best free hour in town. We bought fish and chips from a stand near the pier entrance and ate them sitting on the sand, watching pelicans glide in formation just above the swell. Further along, the point break draws a loyal crowd of longboarders, and even from the beach you can hear them calling each other into waves.

Gateway to the Channel Islands

What finally justified the trip was the ferry. Ventura Harbor is the main departure point for Channel Islands National Park, and we caught an early boat out to Anacapa Island, an hour across open water that can turn choppy fast. The island itself is little more than volcanic cliffs and a lighthouse, but the boat ride there passed through pods of common dolphins riding the bow wave, and the sea caves along Anacapa’s shoreline glowed an improbable turquoise. It’s easy to forget, standing on Main Street, that one of the least-visited national parks in the country is a short boat ride away.

Getting There

Ventura sits about sixty-five miles northwest of Los Angeles, roughly ninety minutes by car via Highway 101 traffic depending. Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner also stops downtown, a scenic and relaxed alternative to driving. The nearest major airport is LAX, though Santa Barbara Airport, forty minutes north, is a smaller and often easier option. Once in town, downtown Ventura and the pier are easily walkable, but a car is worth having for the short drive out to Ventura Harbor and the Channel Islands ferry terminal.