When you are on an island, everything you consume has to be barged over from the mainland. In the case of groceries and gasoline, the entire delivery truck is loaded onto the barge and brought to the island and barged back empty. This causes the prices for such commodities to go way up.
While you can’t cut down on groceries and such, you can do something about fuel consumption. In order to cope with 5-dollar-per-gallon-plus gas prices, most Catalina Island residents drive small golf-cart sized vehicles since the town is rather small. You also see motor scooters and we saw a Segway while we were there.
One interesting vehicle we saw was this motorized stand-up three-wheeled solution which the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department uses to patrol the streets of Avalon. Click on the picture below for a large close-up.
