San Diego is a beautiful city with its harbor, sprawling hills, and long coastline of cliffs and rocks, but also beaches with lifeguards and tourists and interesting beach-side towns, each with its own character. The area is actually made up of many towns outside the San Diego city proper, such as the southern beach towns: Pacific Beach, Coronado (a military town), Imperial Beach, and the northern beaches like La Jolla and Ocean Beach. There are the southern towns that stretch eastward into the desert, such as Spring Valley, Chula Vista, Lemon Grove, and the more northern ones, such as Escondido and Del Mar.
I wrote this as I sat on the deck of my brother’s apartment in Imperial Beach (IB), CA, just south of San Diego. He has the most wonderful deck that could ever be created. It is redwood, sheltered by the deck of the apartment above him, and decorated with thick ropes like the kind ships use, a few strategically placed fish nets decorated with shells, a ship’s bumper (used by boats to prevent them from bumping against a dock) hanging from the wooden deck above us, and a long thin buoy which hangs from the top stair of the steep wooden stairway that leads to the deck above. There are several bushes in front of the deck and a short walkway from it to the beach. A sturdy wooden reclining deck chair lies flat along the walkway waiting for someone to sunbathe on it. There are some fairly large rocks below the walkway and bushes with the beach stretching before us.
The apartment itself has only two small bedrooms, one of which David has converted to an office with all his computers and tech equipment, a very small kitchen and small living room. It is cool because of the ocean breezes that come in through sliding doors of the deck that he keeps open most of the time. (The doors don’t close well because they are slightly broken around the track.) Because the average temperature at the beach here is approximately 70 F year round, this is quite wonderful. At night the temperature drops to about the mid to low ‘60s, year round. It’s an old, small house that needs a lot of fixing up, but nothing can beat its location. The sounds of the waves permeate everything and are the lulling background to everything here. I haven’t slept so well with the windows open and the sounds of the waves sweeping around me since the last time I was home in Margate, NJ. Well, that would be true if my back didn’t hurt so much. The pain kept me awake, but the sounds of the surf kept me calm and relaxed.
The next morning, I hopped down off the walkway onto the beach and walked for a while along the surf, watching the gulls and the long billed curlews fight over clams and whatever they managed to snatch up from the tide line. The wrack line was cluttered with piles of uprooted kelp that had washed up. Sand fleas rose in waves from the kelp to bite my legs. I passed a huge building with a large tower that is the lifeguard station. This town takes lifeguards and their jobs very seriously. The lifeguard stands, located a few blocks away from each other, are strong, large enclosed towers that allow the lifeguards to see outside the windows and get out of the towers quickly if necessary. They are a long way from the simple, basic, wooden raised chairs that the lifeguards on the South Jersey beaches use. As I walked down the beach, back to my brother’s place, I saw a large pelican standing on the beach. He spread his wings, nodded his head up and down a few times, then took off, flying away across the water, down the beach. I walked on along the coarse sand, stepping around the piles of kelp and occasional clumps of dog crap. No one in this area seems to take cleaning up after their dogs seriously. It is disgusting and frustrating. The sand is not as coarse as other beaches I’ve walked on, but it is not the fine, smooth sand of the Jersey Shore, either. The water is warm enough that I can walk through the tide line without being uncomfortable, but it is only in the low ‘60s – at best it might get up to around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the average water temperature around here; the water never gets warm enough to swim or surf comfortably in without a wet suit, unlike the Jersey shore which warms up into the ‘70s around the end of June and is that warm until mid-September. However, the waves here in IB and most of Southern California are bigger than what NJ usually sees. The surfing is better here.
My brother took me to the Tijuana River Estuary. (See photos.) It is a beautiful wetlands area between the southern most edge of California and Tijuana, Mexico. It is a wildlife preserve run by the California state park system and offers many dry trails that are easy to follow and that wind through the estuary. We walked along one of the main paths, watching the birds and admiring the plants. It was quiet, flat, and beautiful. Across the wetlands rose the cliffs and mountains of Mexico.
Later, we drove to the Border Field State Park. This is the most southwestern point of the USA. We had to park the car by the entrance to the park and walk down a sandy road toward the beach because the park is open to vehicles only on weekends. We passed several groups of people riding horses. This is one of the few places someone can ride a horse to and along a beach. As we walked and got closer to the beach, we passed a long pole with cameras and lights at the top of it. This park is controlled by the border patrol. There are several dirt roads that start from the road we were walking on and that run up into the hills around us, all blocked off with signs stating “authorized vehicles only” – these are for the border patrol vehicles. At the top of the hills beyond us we could see the Mexican city of Tijuana and the border fence that separates it from the preserved southern part of the Tijuana estuary that runs all along the USA side of the border to end at the beach we were approaching, but, to be honest, never reached because my back became too painful from all the walking, and we had to turn around and hike back to the car. We could see the bull fighting stadium, the Mexican highway, and houses that all stretch right up to the fence on the Mexican side.
Late that afternoon, we drove over to historic Old Town, San Diego, which claims to be the first place where Europeans settled in California. According to the Old Town, San Diego, website, “San Diego is the site of the first permanent Spanish settlement in California. It was here in 1769, that Father Junipero Serra came to establish the very first mission in a chain of 21 missions that were to be the cornerstone of California’s colonization. Father Serra’s mission and Presidio were built on a hillside overlooking what is currently known as Old Town San Diego. At the base of the hill in 1820’s, a small Mexican community of adobe buildings was formed and by 1835 had attained the status of El Pueblo de San Diego.” [Note to all of my fellow English teachers: I’m trying to use the Associated Press formatting and citation style here, not the MLA or APA!] We wandered around the old buildings and shops, then had a delicious dinner at one of the Mexican restaurants there. I had vegetarian enchiladas with rice and black beans. The green sauce on the enchiladas was spicy, but didn’t hide the flavor of the corn tortillas, spinach, and mushrooms.
That evening we sat on Dave’s deck and watched the sunset over the Pacific Ocean.
I wrote this as I sat on the deck of my brother’s apartment in Imperial Beach (IB), CA, just south of San Diego. He has the most wonderful deck that could ever be created. It is redwood, sheltered by the deck of the apartment above him, and decorated with thick ropes like the kind ships use, a few strategically placed fish nets decorated with shells, a ship’s bumper (used by boats to prevent them from bumping against a dock) hanging from the wooden deck above us, and a long thin buoy which hangs from the top stair of the steep wooden stairway that leads to the deck above. There are several bushes in front of the deck and a short walkway from it to the beach. A sturdy wooden reclining deck chair lies flat along the walkway waiting for someone to sunbathe on it. There are some fairly large rocks below the walkway and bushes with the beach stretching before us.
The apartment itself has only two small bedrooms, one of which David has converted to an office with all his computers and tech equipment, a very small kitchen and small living room. It is cool because of the ocean breezes that come in through sliding doors of the deck that he keeps open most of the time. (The doors don’t close well because they are slightly broken around the track.) Because the average temperature at the beach here is approximately 70 F year round, this is quite wonderful. At night the temperature drops to about the mid to low ‘60s, year round. It’s an old, small house that needs a lot of fixing up, but nothing can beat its location. The sounds of the waves permeate everything and are the lulling background to everything here. I haven’t slept so well with the windows open and the sounds of the waves sweeping around me since the last time I was home in Margate, NJ. Well, that would be true if my back didn’t hurt so much. The pain kept me awake, but the sounds of the surf kept me calm and relaxed.
The next morning, I hopped down off the walkway onto the beach and walked for a while along the surf, watching the gulls and the long billed curlews fight over clams and whatever they managed to snatch up from the tide line. The wrack line was cluttered with piles of uprooted kelp that had washed up. Sand fleas rose in waves from the kelp to bite my legs. I passed a huge building with a large tower that is the lifeguard station. This town takes lifeguards and their jobs very seriously. The lifeguard stands, located a few blocks away from each other, are strong, large enclosed towers that allow the lifeguards to see outside the windows and get out of the towers quickly if necessary. They are a long way from the simple, basic, wooden raised chairs that the lifeguards on the South Jersey beaches use. As I walked down the beach, back to my brother’s place, I saw a large pelican standing on the beach. He spread his wings, nodded his head up and down a few times, then took off, flying away across the water, down the beach. I walked on along the coarse sand, stepping around the piles of kelp and occasional clumps of dog crap. No one in this area seems to take cleaning up after their dogs seriously. It is disgusting and frustrating. The sand is not as coarse as other beaches I’ve walked on, but it is not the fine, smooth sand of the Jersey Shore, either. The water is warm enough that I can walk through the tide line without being uncomfortable, but it is only in the low ‘60s – at best it might get up to around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the average water temperature around here; the water never gets warm enough to swim or surf comfortably in without a wet suit, unlike the Jersey shore which warms up into the ‘70s around the end of June and is that warm until mid-September. However, the waves here in IB and most of Southern California are bigger than what NJ usually sees. The surfing is better here.
My brother took me to the Tijuana River Estuary. (See photos.) It is a beautiful wetlands area between the southern most edge of California and Tijuana, Mexico. It is a wildlife preserve run by the California state park system and offers many dry trails that are easy to follow and that wind through the estuary. We walked along one of the main paths, watching the birds and admiring the plants. It was quiet, flat, and beautiful. Across the wetlands rose the cliffs and mountains of Mexico.
Later, we drove to the Border Field State Park. This is the most southwestern point of the USA. We had to park the car by the entrance to the park and walk down a sandy road toward the beach because the park is open to vehicles only on weekends. We passed several groups of people riding horses. This is one of the few places someone can ride a horse to and along a beach. As we walked and got closer to the beach, we passed a long pole with cameras and lights at the top of it. This park is controlled by the border patrol. There are several dirt roads that start from the road we were walking on and that run up into the hills around us, all blocked off with signs stating “authorized vehicles only” – these are for the border patrol vehicles. At the top of the hills beyond us we could see the Mexican city of Tijuana and the border fence that separates it from the preserved southern part of the Tijuana estuary that runs all along the USA side of the border to end at the beach we were approaching, but, to be honest, never reached because my back became too painful from all the walking, and we had to turn around and hike back to the car. We could see the bull fighting stadium, the Mexican highway, and houses that all stretch right up to the fence on the Mexican side.
Late that afternoon, we drove over to historic Old Town, San Diego, which claims to be the first place where Europeans settled in California. According to the Old Town, San Diego, website, “San Diego is the site of the first permanent Spanish settlement in California. It was here in 1769, that Father Junipero Serra came to establish the very first mission in a chain of 21 missions that were to be the cornerstone of California’s colonization. Father Serra’s mission and Presidio were built on a hillside overlooking what is currently known as Old Town San Diego. At the base of the hill in 1820’s, a small Mexican community of adobe buildings was formed and by 1835 had attained the status of El Pueblo de San Diego.” [Note to all of my fellow English teachers: I’m trying to use the Associated Press formatting and citation style here, not the MLA or APA!] We wandered around the old buildings and shops, then had a delicious dinner at one of the Mexican restaurants there. I had vegetarian enchiladas with rice and black beans. The green sauce on the enchiladas was spicy, but didn’t hide the flavor of the corn tortillas, spinach, and mushrooms.
That evening we sat on Dave’s deck and watched the sunset over the Pacific Ocean.