a San Diego Sunrise, Famosa Slough & a German restaurant

This past Friday started very well:




It was supposed to be a gorgeous day, so Fred and I decided to visit a couple of places we'd long wanted to visit but hadn't yet, and one we had.

The first was Famosa Slough. This is one of the birding hotspots in San Diego, and though we'd driven by it many times on the way to Point Loma, we'd never quite figured out how to visit it. Famosa Slough is a 30 acre wetlands owned by the city of San Diego. Note, that's I-8 in the background of the photo. An urban wetlands indeed!


It turns out to be quite easy to get there. There is a trail that goes from one end to the other, more or less, though some of it is along a road, and you have to cross a very busy street to get to the northern part of the Slough. We followed the directions in 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: San Diego

When we go again (and we will), we'll park on the street between the two sections of the Slough; the birding was best in the middle.

Unfortunately, the parking lot was closed due to a special project (but there was plenty of street parking). Fortunately, the project was restoration of parts of the wetland that was silted up and overgrown by non-native plants. The crew was largely comprised of the California Conservation Corps, an organization started in 1976 by then-and-now Governor Jerry Brown as a work program for young people.



We stopped and watched for a bit and chatted with David Kimball, the San Diego Bird Festival guru. He and Jim Peugh, respectively the Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Friends of Famosa Slough, were there to check on the work and also get their boots dirty helping out.

The full accounting of the birding that day will be on my birding blog. It proved to be a great place to bird, as advertised, and a very pleasant oasis in the midst of a busy town.




Here's the far northern end of the Slough:


Fred in front of a cactus and bougainvillea patch. There's been enough rain so that things are in bloom.






We had worked up quite an appetite, so we went to our second stop of the day, the Kaiserhof German restaurant, where we enjoyed a hearty German meal (sauerbraten for me and lamb shank for Fred) that more than made up for the calories we had worked off. It was just barely warm enough to eat outside (with the help of a space heater). Good food, good service. The Kaiserhof is closed on Mondays, usually, but will be open on Valentine's Day. When I asked about people proposing at the restaurant, our waiter said "No, Germans aren't very romantic." (Write the Kaiserhof, not me.)

We decided to put off our planned third stop, to the Ocean Beach pier to look for loons, for another day and take a nap instead.