Agile Trekker: Arroyo Verde Park, Ventura and Chumash Painted Cave Historic Park, Santa Barbara, California

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
10/17/2026	2.3 miles	1 hour 27 minutes	565'	1.5 mph	309.5

Parking:

Arroyo Verde Park Road

Map:

Gai GPS app

Directions:

Misc trails

We left our campground. Across the street from the campground was a visitor center, but it wasn't open yet when we left in the morning. Next to it was the "USA's smallest post office." Except it no longer is a working post office, which was disappointing. Apparently, it used to be. I wanted to sketch it; except we were moving on.

We were looking for a place to hike today. We struggled actually. Many trails were actually closed due to fire concerns due to the high winds. We ended up at the Arroyo Verde Park. When we paid the park entrance fee, we asked about where the longest trail was. The guy just said there was really only one trail, a loop around the park. It looked terribly disappointing. More like a county park. But we wanted to get some exercise in, so we headed off. What we discovered after leaving the main park area was a mess of trails. Many of them were wide dirt roads, but they were hilly and challenging. The heat was blazing, and the hike had full exposure. We ended up in some open space area - I was unclear whether this was part of the park or not. But it was hot and hilly. We saw a hike up to a peak. The trail looked miserable, but I wanted to do it for the view. The trail WAS miserable. Oh my gosh, it was challenging. We both just hoped that we wouldn't have to hike down it, as I might have to go down on my butt. We found another route down, which felt less like a route, but somehow made it down in one piece. This hike was way harder than I expected! Even though it was short, I was DONE when we got back. We sat in the parking lot and made lunch in some shade.

Later in the day, we stopped by the Channel Islands National Park visitor center. It's in Ventura, not actually on the islands.

We still had time to kill, so we visited the Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park. It was out of the way, but cave paintings fascinate me. It's a tiny cave right off the road. Unfortunately, there is a gate across the shallow cave in order to prevent vandalism.