Hello all,
So I just got back from the Two Harbors trip. Thanks again for everyone's input on this thread. My take is that it's not what it once was, but perhaps I had a different sense of what I remembered from years ago. In the past this was a small sleepy town that few people would travel to over Avalon. Perhaps I was just always there off-season, but it seemed a lot more packed than I remember. I was able to anchor so that was nice to get t skip the mooring ball fees (I was on the south side of Isthmus Cove near the beach with the campgrounds) and it didn't seem too bad in that location other than the wind, which was really blowing while we were out there.
My take on the "improvements" is that Two Harbors is trying to be something it's not, or at the very least something it's not yet become. It seems like they are trying to make the place fancy, which is the opposite of what I remember Two Harbors being. In the past it was just this quaint place that didn't take itself too seriously, but now it's trying to be a resort, without unfortunately the skill to pull it off. For example Harbor Sands (the one restaurant there) used to be this place that you came to have a laid back dinner if you didn't want to cook. I'm sure it was never cheap as nothing on the island is, but it was a friendly restaurant that had a rustic small town feel. Now it's still a bit of the same place, but with much higher prices, fancier meal options, but still the same amount of skill that they had in the past at cooking which means you pay a lot more for not very well prepared meals and poor service. Basically I feel like they are stuck between worlds right now, wanting to be fancy, charging like they really are fancy, but not getting it together in a way that really convinces anyone.
So in the end I think we all decided that next year if we go back to Catalina we'll be going to Avalon. We'll wait for Two Harbors to either go back to being a nice laid back town or truly make the shift to being a resort, but right now it's just not really good at either.
Take care,
-Levin