Volunteers needed! Volunteer work parties take place from 9am-12pm at the Kendall-Frost Marsh. Please wear long pants and sun or rain protection. Bring your favorite work boots or gloves, or we can provide these to you.
Yesterday I was privileged to watch citizens in San Diego teaming up to improve our environment. During the Love Your Wetlands Day event, a group of concerned people gathered together to help clean and restore the beautiful Kendall-Frost Marsh in Mission Bay.
Do you live in San Diego? Do you enjoy nature and being outdoors? Do you love seeing and protecting wildlife and birds? Do you have a bit of free time? Would you like to personally make a very big difference in this world?
Volunteers are needed to help restore San Diego wetlands! Spread the word! Find out more by contacting the San Diego Audubon Society from this page of their website! Or check out more info by clicking the above photo.
Volunteers help to restore wetlands in Mission Bay. Do you live in Pacific Beach or in greater San Diego? With a little elbow grease, you can actually make a big difference!
Love Your Wetlands Day took place in Pacific Beach at north Mission Bay’s small Kendall-Frost Marsh.
Late this morning I headed up to Pacific Beach to experience Love Your Wetlands Day. The annual event provides a once-a-year opportunity for the public to visit the protected Kendall-Frost Marsh, which lies in the north part of Mission Bay.
I was really impressed by the efforts underway by the San Diego Audubon Society and the UC Natural Reserve System to restore this wetland, and by all the people who showed up for the event. Hopefully my blog will help raise awareness about this very important project.
I definitely learned a lot! Please read the photo captions . . .
The Kendall-Frost Marsh is being restored into a healthy wetland by the San Diego Audubon Society and the UC Natural Reserve System with the help of volunteers.The slough is a prime location for birdlife. Many different birds can be spotted in this protected wildlife refuge, which is usually off-limits to the public.Photos of bird sightings on the surrounding fence.I arrived a bit early to the event, and watched from the nearby street as last-minute preparations took place.A sign welcomes visitors to Love Your Wetlands Day. Lots of activities included bird watching, a water quality testing demo, and a marsh clean-up.People sign in to the event. A few lucky attendees won raffle prizes!The San Diego Audubon Society had a table at the special outdoor event.Information at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Coastal Program exhibit shows the marsh boundaries and restoration efforts.This super cool volunteer at a fun kids activity table gave me the thumbs up!A nearby area where native vegetation is being carefully restored.These plants will eventually be transplanted into the marsh.A look across the marsh southward, toward the greater part of Mission Bay, a large urban recreational park in San Diego.As the event gets underway, many energetic people arrive.Fun nature mural on side of the Kendall-Frost Reserve Trailer in Pacific Beach!Many photos around the exterior of the trailer show insects, flowers, birds and other wildlife that make the marsh their home.A row of waterproof boots awaits volunteers.Putting on some boots before heading out into the muddy, mucky marsh!Tools that are used to remove trash from the environmentally sensitive marshland.A fun art project for kids involved creatively decorating stones!Speaker describes how the ReWild project of the San Diego Audubon Society is working to restore important wetlands in the northeast corner of Mission Bay.A chart at one table shows types of pollutants found on the beaches of San Diego.Water quality tests include monitoring pH, temperature, oxygen content and turbidity.Folks are heading every which way, learning about the marsh and setting about to help restore it!Walking over to collect a water sample. The Kendall-Frost Mission Bay Marsh Reserve habitats include coastal sage scrub, south coastal salt marsh, tidal channels, salt flats and mudflats.Water from a storm drain is collected by volunteers for testing.After putting on boots and grabbing buckets, a gang of volunteers is out in the marsh seeing it up close and removing unwanted debris.Netting is laid down by more volunteers to help prevent erosion during rain. A big storm is coming tomorrow!Love Your Wetlands Day was a great opportunity for the public to help preserve and enhance the Kendall-Frost Marsh!
Beginning my walk south from Crystal Pier along the boardwalk.
Now please walk with me as I head south down the Pacific Beach boardwalk. We’re starting at Crystal Pier and going all the way to Hamel’s down in Mission Beach. It’s one of the most amazing walks (or bike rides) in all of the world!
Cool octopus art made of tile, stones and shells.
This bit of artwork was next to the walkway right by the pier.
Folks head toward a hungry shark and big ice cream cone!Youth hostel by Pacific Beach boardwalk has a sunny mural.A small backyard is paradise on the beach!Colorful surfboards by beach contain happy messages.Fish tacos are a San Diego specialty!Shells and boogie boards line the boardwalk for passing tourists.Just a sample of what you’d see while walking along the beach.Looking out toward umbrellas and the blue Pacific Ocean.Several camps on the sand teach people to surf.Kids learning to surf file along carrying surfboards.People chat as a lifeguard watches the beach from a tower.Colorful beach toys left forgotten on the concrete sea wall.Beautiful and unusual houses line the boardwalk.The Surf Rider building includes a huge surfboard!Bicycles are a very popular mode of transportation.I reached the Hamel’s castle surf shop in Mission Beach!Lady looks through a high stack of surfboards.Cool mural in alley shows a roller coaster.
This mural in the alley behind Hamel’s shows a roller coaster. Is there a roller coaster nearby in Mission Beach? Yes, indeed! We’ll visit Belmont Park in my next blog post!
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Archway of Crystal Pier Hotel and Cottages at end of Garnet Avenue.
Many years ago (decades actually), I used to occasionally go fishing from Crystal Pier. It’s located in Pacific Beach, at the west end of Garnet Avenue, which I strolled along in my last blog post.
While it isn’t a very long pier, it’s definitely one hundred percent cool. One reason is because fishing from Crystal Pier is both free and amazingly productive. While I never seemed to catch anything but mackerel, I remember seeing nice catches of bonito, rock fish, sea bass, barracuda, guitar fish, sharks and even halibut! (One nice thing about pier fishing in San Diego is you legally don’t need a fishing license.)
Why else is this pier super cool? Because there are small cottages built right on it! The historic Crystal Pier Hotel and Cottages was built in 1930. Once known as Pickering’s Pleasure Pier, for a short time the privately owned pier featured a Crystal Ballroom and carnival midway out at its end!
If I were a tourist visiting San Diego, I’d absolutely want to stay here. At night the pier is closed to the public, and you can lie in bed listening to the ocean waves below. During the day you have easy access to the famous Pacific Beach boardwalk, which I’ll show you in my next blog post!
One of the small, quaint cottages actually on the pier!Looking along the short pier past fishermen and visitors.Turning back eastward toward the cottages.Surfers below Crystal Pier floating and waiting on their surfboards.This surfer caught a good ride on a nice wave.This pic shows fishing, surfing and the beach.Leaving Crystal Pier, to walk down the Pacific Beach boardwalk.
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Cool art on a music store window on Garnet Avenue.
Yesterday I went for a very long walk through Pacific Beach and Mission Beach, two extremely popular beach destinations just a few miles north of downtown San Diego.
I began by walking west along Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach, from around Ingraham Street all the way to the beautiful and historic Crystal Pier. This stretch contains more bars, tattoo parlors, smoke shops and swimwear stores than just about anywhere else in Southern California. It’s a young, hip, beachy sort of place, that’s mostly laid back and unpretentious. You’ll see bikinis and skateboarders and tourists and families and surfboards atop cars and under arms just about everywhere you go.
You’ll also see a lot of very cool urban art: on walls, on windows, on rooftops, in alleys…all over the place! Here are some random pics I took as I walked westward in the sunshine…
Aloha Spirit mural on side of Pacific Beach building.Surfers and the ocean are major themes in this popular beach community.Mural shows lifeguard climbing a tower among palms.Funky street art between two buildings on Garnet Avenue.Pacific Beach public art features a large seagull.Street art in an alley behind a tattoo parlor.Hubcaps and tiles add flavor to a colorful local eatery.Another tattoo parlor embellished with bold swirls of urban art.Photo mural on a wall shows old Crystal Pier at west end of Garnet Avenue.Sunny Pacific Beach has a sunny utility box.Images of surfers and beach scenes are everywhere.
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