You can visit the Channel Islands National Park without actually setting foot on one of the eight Channel Islands. The official visitors center is right there in Ventura, CA, just a short drive from the marina and close to some fine and funky shopping along the strip.

But it seems like cheating. To be sure, you can climb up to the center’s observation deck and train a telescope on the islands off in the distance – or you can when it’s not foggy like it was the day I was there – then go down and, if you’re into that kind of thing like I am, you can get your national parks passport cancellation mark. Maybe even with a clear conscience. But they won’t let you use the Anacapa Island cancellation unless you go to the island itself. Let’s hear it for some kind of integrity.

In the afternoon, a ferry runs to East Anacapa, and it offers one of the best approaches to a national park I have experienced. Along the 12-mile trip folks watch for seals and whales, but most eyes are trained straight ahead, where a low purple bar on the horizon slowly resolves itself into a steeply walled island next to a large rock arch. Enthusiasm getting the best of me, I declare, “This looks like an island is supposed to look!” To which the guy I’m traveling with responds, “You mean a piece of land surrounded by water?”

Improved resolution now shows that the walls of both the island and the rock are whitewashed in bird droppings, equally fascinating and gross: How many birds over how many years does it take to paint an island white?

The ferry pulls up to a rusted stair that climbs the cliffs to the top, and after receiving several warnings about getting back to the boat before it leaves for the mainland in a few hours, we are turned loose to wander about as we will. It’s a steep climb for us handicappers, so it’s probably best to just let everyone else go before us; we can poke along at our own rate, and stop and feel the weathered iron railings once in a while.

Fortunately, the top of Anacapa is relatively flat and easily hiked, though the strange landscape will slow anyone down a lot just because you have to stop and look at it so often.

What’s strange are the plants. Succulents both smooth-leaved and spiny line the dirt path, sometimes several feet high, and dotted throughout are giant coreopsis, kind of like a tree of yellow daisies. Or so I imagine them. At the time I’m on the island, nearly everything is dry and dormant, and the coreopsis are popularly said to look a lot like the shaggy “dark and gloomy” snide plants of Dr. Seuss’ “What Was I Scared Of?”

Anacapa is the only place I’ve ever been where the paths are lined with down. The island is home to so many birds (remember them?) that feathers cover nearly everything, collecting on the edges like dust and flitting about in the air whenever the wind picks up. I can’t imagine anyone with allergies making it back to the ferry at all, let alone on time, and the frequent piles of bones (birds again) seem ominous.

Like most visitors, I’m making my way to Inspiration Point, apparently the official photo-op for all eight islands in the park, and it is a great view: Hunchback spines of rock lead off into the western ocean, and beyond them the next island in the chain – Santa Cruz – stands invitingly close.

I could stay there for a while – if not for inspiration, at least to consider wave patterns on the beaches below – but the guy I’m with wants to check out the light station on the opposite tip of Anacapa, so we circle around and head back the way we came.

Maybe we were too distracted by the landscape on the way, but as we come around the other side of the island, we are told that our time is almost over. A dash up the hill to the lighthouse gate, another photo-op, some more birds.

“We need to see the rest of the islands someday,” I say. I have been to some sites in the national parks system that seemed complete enough in one visit. But the Channel Islands are like risers in that rusted ladder on the cliff. I’m willing to climb as many of them as I can.