In San Diego at the Sweetwater Regional Park. Wanted to visit some of the wildlife refuges in the area: Tijuana Slough NWR and The San Diego Bay NWR. Also, Zhen Zhen, the baby panda at the San Diego Zoo is due to go on display at any time. Would love to see her and her mom, Bai Yun.
Had a heck of a time finding Sweetwater County Park. A new toll freeway has been constructed next to it and getting here confused both me and my friend Garmin. Left the elephants around 2:30 p.m. and didn’t think there would be any problem travelling the 30 miles to Sweetwater. Ended up going in circles through multiple high-end housing developments (housing track hell). Garmin directed me to a dirt road that had a sign saying “End of Pavement” “No Trucks”. Had no idea where the road went or what condition it was in. Backed up and turned around so Garmin could recalculate the route, but ended up at another dirt road! All this was complicated by the fact that my gas gauge was on empty, it was rush hour with a lot of traffic on roads with a lot of road work being done, and night was closing in. Changed my priority to finding gas. Garmin came through on this for me, albeit through long, slow traffic jams.
Did finally make it to Sweetwater Park around 6:00 p.m. The dirt roads were being constructed for the housing tracts and did take me to the park. Started raining after I got settled. So I was lucky on that point. The park is nice, even with freeways on two sides and jet planes flying over to land in San Diego. It is set on a hill and there are 15 miles of trails for horses and people. It is also very close to the places I want to visit.
The San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge has a bird aviary for birds who cannot survive in the wild. Bald eagle above, hawk with one bad eye below.
Barn owl
They had some cute diving ducks. They would disappear in a flash underwater.
