Colton+Santa+Cruz

Cruz __Santa Cruz Island__ Santa Cruz Island is a beautiful island just off the shore of Ventura. If you look out to the Channel Islands, from any Ventura Beach, Santa Cruz is the biggest one out of the Channel Island. It is just five miles from Anacapa Island. Santa Cruz is NW from Santa Barbra Island. Santa is one-hundred seventy-five miles from Santa Barbra Island. Santa Cruz is located at 36 degrees north and 122 degrees west. Santa Cruz has a lot of character including beauty. It is weird that on the north side of Santa Cruz is all igneous rock and the south is all sedimentary rock. From the top, Santa Cruz looks like it is the Loch Ness Monster with a lot of wrinkles and a cut off tail. Besides beauty, there is more to Santa Cruz that makes it paradise. Its animals are an example to what Santa Cruz is all about. One of the animals is the **Island Fox**. The island fox is a small fox that can be found on six of the eight Channel Islands. The male island fox is always bigger than the female. One that I am interested in is the native **scrub jay**. They are all endemic to Santa Cruz. I know they look pretty, but they eat insects, spiders, snakes, lizards, mice and other bird’s eggs. The scrub jay is very similar to the blue jay. While the island has beauty and **fauna** (animals), it also has **flora** (plants). Like for example, my favorite one, the silver lotus is a beautiful plant which is only on Santa Cruz Island and is in the pea family. It looks like one or two really tiny lemon(s) with a yellow blanket around their backs. But that is only one flower. Imagine millions of those! Another one that I like is the **Manzanita**. In Spanish, ‘**Manzanita**’ means ‘little apple.’ And if you see one you will know how it got its name. It got its name because it looks like an apple tree with tiny green apples.