SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS FAMILY ADVENTURE
| Dates: | June 22 - 26 5 days, 4 nights |
| Cost: | Adults - $350 |
| Your Fees Include: | 4 nights camping, 4 dinners, entrance fees, guided activities |
| Walk Status: | OPEN |
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Questions about this walk?
Contact Don Nierlich
A NEW 2008 FAMILY ADVENTURE!
View a photo slideshow of the Santa Monica Mountains Family Adventure.
(you must have the Flash Viewer 7 or later for this to work).At the junction of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, where the mountains meet the sea, is a green space that few know is there. The mountains are young and steep with canyons verdant with oaks; the beach is broken into little coves, often with intense blue water and white sand.
For this family-friendly Coastwalk, we are privileged to camp on the grounds of the Malibu Nature Preserve (aka Malibu Riding and Tennis Club), which at one time was the largest private coastal recreational facility in Southern California. Now owned by the non-profit Nature Trust of the Santa Monica Mountains, our camp site offers developed recreational facilities, a Sycamore-Oak Woodland canyon, and miles of hiking trails in the preserve and neighboring Leo Carrillo State Park, S.M. Mountains National Recreation Area and Nicholas Canyon County Beach. Together, these offer a wonderful diversity of recreational opportunities and natural surroundings.
We will camp in the big corral – the “tack room” provides restrooms/hot showers; tents are the norm, but there is space for RVs off to one side (no hookups though).
Included activities:
- We will hike the nearby trails and shore;
- Explore for nearby Native American Chumash artifacts; study the bedrock mortars that they left behind as a record of acorns ground; hear stories about the Chumash and other Indians who lived along the Coast here for about more than 10,000 years before present; visit a reconstructed Chumash village; see how an ap (willow hut) is made;
- Walk the beaches, looking for shells, polished stones and objects not-easily explained; explore tide pools with a biologist, and look for buried treasure in the nearby ocean caves. (Recall that many European explorers and pirates anchored off modern-day Malibu [an Indian word] to re-provision);
- Swim both in the club’s pool and at the beach; perhaps try snorkeling or maybe enjoy a game of tennis;
- We’ll play “wide-games”, beach soccer, and do a challenging engineering project involving raw eggs;
- Make crafts and constructions;
- Talk about wilderness survival; look for edible plants; learn about healthy, natural foods;
- We’ll each carry out a project combining the best of what we have learned about the California Coastal Indians, what we have seen, made and photographed;
- One evening we’ll have dinner on the beach; another evening we’ll have a talent show and singing; and finally, we will have show and tell about the projects that we have done;
- Gaze with telescopes at the night time skies; hear stories about the constellations;
- And the highlight, we’ll mark a segment of the Coastal Trail (CCT) with signs bearing the newly adopted logo (pending State-agency approval);
- And as with all Coastwalks, we will enjoy wonderful meals prepared by enthusiastic cooks.
Other attractions in the area:
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