Bikin' on down the Strand

Jason & I finally got to do this bike ride that I'd been wanting to do for over a year. It's only about 30 miles and no big hills, so it's a pretty easy ride. We started by riding through Balboa Park to Downtown to the ferry landing. It had rained a fair amount the day before so there were all these fantastic clouds above San Diego Bay.



Ferry rides are always so relaxing.



A quick trek down down the street ended us up at Clayton's Coffee Shop at 979 Orange Ave in Coronado. This a real authentic 50's dinner. No new knock-offs put in here; all of the decor, dispenser, but not the waitresses actually have made it through about 6 decades to join us here today. Which means though very clean, some things are looking a little crusty...but we like them all the same. Jason w/ a pie silhouette on the counter.



And of course w/ pie comes a cup of coffee. I'll make a Twin Peaks reference and hope it was cherry pie.



Really a neat place but when I went to the bathroom before continuing our ride, this is the toilet. This could totally be on thereifixedit.com, but hey, at least the door can open all the way!



Off down the Silver Strand, a sliver of road connecting Coronado to the mainland. There's huge & clean breakdown lanes on either side of the road but I suggest taking the bike path on the East side of the road. There's several vista spots along the way to stop and soak in the land & water. We were beginning to fear getting rained on because those clouds were dominating the sky so.



There's a nasty chain link fence along the road for reasons unknown to me. Didn't seem to bother the white egret chillin' & looking for little fishies.



Almost at Imperial Beach, an abandoned campground...or maybe there's just no winter use at it. (Those clouds in the background just amaze me! I'm Huell Howser and that's amazing!)



The surfing statue says this is Imperial Beach. So yes, you can continue on the bike path and head up the other side of the bay or exit and head west on Palm Ave to the beach.



Jason relaxing on the other side of the jetty. The sun decided to stay out. Down the road is the IB Forum, "the Most Southwesterly Bar & Grill in the USA" and it had a surprisingly decent quesadilla. http://ib-forum.com/



Happy bellies not overly full, we cascaded through IB past the horse ranches down Monument Rd to the Tijuana Estuary State Park: http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=669

A rare preserve among the border, there are several types of elegant birds here holding their ground including more snowy egrets and we got to see a great blue heron. As mentioned before we had a heavy rain the day before. Even though the first part of the trail hosted a gigantic mud puddle somehow I convinced Jason that would not be the case w/ the rest of the hike I was hoping to do through the preserve. He he...

One gigantic puddle followed another as we attempted to sneak our way around them w/out slipping in. Border Patrol was kind enough to stop and say hi. Hi Border Patrol! At one point we hit a puddle where our shoes were going to get stuck so off those shoes went...figured it's better to get only the feet muddy rather than the shoes, too. Then we met our match: this puddle was at a crossroads about 60' across. Slowly we start to walk across sinking a little deeper w/ each step. After about a third of the way and already knee high we realize this is a no go and reluctantly turn around to trek on back. We looked like we were wearing knee high brown socks which I would've had a picture of if my finger hadn't hit a button on my camera switching it to manuel and overexposing the proceeding shots. Sigh. But here's Jason's shoes below.

After trying an alternate path that was dry but filled w/ prickly weeds on our poor bare feet, we made it back to our bikes and figured we'd just walk to the ocean to rinse our legs off clean. Nope...lots of puddles that way too. Luckily we always carry lots of water on these trips and because of our food stops we hadn't used too much, so we cleaned off w/ our bottled water.

Overall the estuary is a pretty serene place but there's a Naval field just north of it and they were doing helicopter drills so the whole time we're there we hear the thump thump thump thump of the blades. Besides BP, no one else was seen during the hike until we're cleaning our legs off. This biker comes by, sees what we're doing and starts talking about how dirty the water is down there. Yeah dude, I really don't want to think about how many parasites or bacteria I picked up walking barefoot by the border, thanks. And I'm not actually annoyed...it was a fun adventure and I'm glad Jason's so easy going that he'll do these odd trips w/ me even when they don't go off as planned.



Now it's east on Monument Rd to Camino de la Plaza taken to the border trolley. Half a mile from the border Jason gets a screw in his tire. Pretty lucky this is the first flat the entire trip. I have a repair kit w/ me but the bike lane is for some reason closed this last half mile anyway and border traffic takes no prisoners so we are both happy to walk instead of trying to ride w/ the cars.



During rush hour it's supposed to be only one bike per car but Trolley security was cool and didn't care. Even helped get my bike on! I really want to do this ride again, hopefully mud free. Thankfully no one seemed to mind us being the stinky people on the trolley.