Today we chose to become tourists in our own town by taking a spin to Coronado Island and the Tijuana River National Wildlife Refuge.
To begin – Coronado is not an island but actually a peninsula. North Island Naval Air Station shares the island….uhh, peninsula with the city of Coronado, A gorgeous bridge, built by Guy F. Atkinson a long time ago, crosses San Diego Bay so folks can get from the city of San Diego and all the other places on the east side of the Bay to Coronado where there seems to be a majority of very rich Republicans. They live in truly opulent residences with way too many square feet of living space per person, like 10,000. Not a single car was spotted without perfect, shiny paint or with a domestic automobile logo and the only folks we saw that were anything but white were going home from their jobs at the naval air station. There doesn’t even seem to be any graffiti.
After considerable time cruising around ogling the nice residential construction, we headed over to see a fine example of commercial construction at the Queen Anne architectural confection known as the Hotel del Coronado. It is a beautiful hotel formerly owned by a guy named Larry Lawrence who was temporarily buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a facility exclusively for military personnel, most killed in battle. Unfortunately for Larry’s corpse, folks found that Larry might have wanted to be buried in ground reserved for heroes but he, unfortunately, had neglected to make the commitment to join any branch of the service so they dug up his lying body and sent it elsewhere. Rich assholes are not necessarily heroes and, as a matter of fact, rarely are so they have to submit to being buried with us mortals.
After much appreciation of architecture, we left Coronado and drove down the highway and peninsula known as the Silver Strand toward Imperial Beach. When I was a kid living here, the Strand was a long, lonely stretch of road with the Pacific Ocean on one side and San Diego Bay on the other. Due to considerable advancements in dredging, the Strand is now lined with upscale resort-like communities and condos such that the bay and ocean are only simultaneously visible for about 500 feet. In Imperial Beach, where it is evident that Coronado is not an island but the tip of a long spit, we pulled over to check out the Tijuana River National Wildlife Refuge.
The Tijuana River is a foul waterway emanating from Tijuana, Mexico and flowing out through Imperial Beach, when it flows. Regardless of the quality of the alleged water in the alleged river, there are abundant birds and other aquatic creatures that have adapted to this place. The animals here may be deaf because they seem to avoid being alarmed by the continuous circling of expensive helicopters doing touch-and-go operations at the Navy’s nearby Ream Field. From the Imperial Beach side of the river, a sharp line of development on the other side of a hideous sheet pile wall can be seen. It is Tijuana. Only expanses of undeveloped land and green and white Border Patrol vehicles can be spotted on the U.S. side.
It was approaching rush hour when we left Imperial Beach but, instead of using the freeways, we took city streets to go back to our spot at Pio Pico. It actually worked and we got back home in record time. Go figure.
We took some nice house shots on today’s trip. Click here