Border Field State Park

Back in July 2011 I wrote about the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge here. Within a week or two we took another jaunt, farther down the road, to Border Field State Park. Which by its name you might imagine is on the Mexican border. Which it is.

The park was more or less closed. Lots of California state parks are closed. A locked gate blocked the vehicle access road, but we left the car and headed down the road on foot. The parking lot was full of horse trailers, and there were folks heading out horseback along trails through the native brush. We took a longish walk on a big dirt road instead of following the horses, which were kicking up dust, and found ourselves at what had been a picnic area, with restrooms. The restrooms were padlocked, and picnic tables had been hauled away, leaving behind the barbecues. Looked a bit desolate.

But there's good news -- when I went to the Border Field State Park web site today I found that this summer they completed renovations. The road is open (and entrance is $5) on weekends and holidays unless there are flood conditions. (We did see signs of high water as we walked.) Now, the website says, there are shaded group picnic areas and other individual tables, and those restrooms are available. Probably locked on weekdays though.

From the abandoned picnic area we headed on west to the beach. I think it's three miles long, north from the border to the mouth of the Tijauna Estuary. Supposedly you can hike on up to Imperial Beach, but I'm not clear on how you would get across the river -- a satellite view doesn't show a bridge. It look like quite a leap. Maybe when the tide is out? I guess we'll have to go see for ourselves. I'll let you know.

But here's the beach at the border of the US side. Empty of people. Pelicans flying over.

And to our left, up on the hill, that bull ring that we wanted to see close up. We saw it from a distance on the previous trip to the Estuary. Notice the border patrol. 

And heading down the dunes, here's the Tijuana beachfront. It's hard to see in the pictures how packed that beach is. 

Sorry for the blurry telescopic photo.

You can't help imagining how one could get across that border. Or maybe it's just my naturally nefarious mind. 

I wish I had a picture of the roadrunner I saw as we were walking back to the car. It darted into the road from one side, raced ahead of us and then off into the brush on the other side. Mike didn't even see it--they are so quick! That's my second roadrunner ever, and they just make you smile.

There are some other day trips I've neglected to put up here, so I'll be trying to catch that up. Keep an eye out.

Joining community life at 33 degrees north -- or not

Being pretty much an extravert all my life, I didn't realize it would take special effort to step out into my new community -- where I've now been living for two years or so. It feels different from the previous moves.

Perhaps I've ground down the edges of my extraversion over time. In fact I'm pretty sure if I re-took the Myers-Briggs Personal Preference Inventory I'd find I've taken a jog into introversion territory. And it's a fact that we're starting over again (in our eleventh neighborhood) more than 50 years older than when we moved into our first apartment in Long Beach.

Thinking about the energy it takes to get connected has gotten me looking back at what it's been like for us in other places. This is the tenth neighborhood we've lived in: Long Beach, Los Angeles, Alhambra, Garden Grove, south Sacramento, east Sacramento, Colorado Springs and back to Sacramento. Granite Falls and Bellingham WA. And now Escondido.

We're back home, in a way. My mother was born in this town, and Mike grew up about 40 miles north. We both have some family spread about "the Southland" and they have bridged the transition for us.
As we've gotten settled (and very settled in) we've been fed and entertained by assorted relatives, on both sides of the family. So they made it easy for us. A plethora of holiday invitations, for example. We managed to eat two Thanksgiving dinners last year, in the same afternoon. One was at 1 p.m. and the other at 3 p.m. and just ten miles apart. That's abundance!

But after a while you realize you need to establish a community life of your own. That takes stepping out a bit. It was easy when the kids were kids, and there was a school community. A couple of times the church (UU) engaged us. We belonged to a Buddhist sangha in Bellingham. But nothing has quite jelled here.

Maybe I'm asking too much. Maybe it's time to embrace that introvert. There's always the old guy to hang out with. We exchange dinners with a neighbor sometimes, and I visit with another. I have a writing group that I really like; Mike has a weekly art class. We still see family, but much less. There are old friends from older communities that we still see sometimes, or stay in touch with this way, on line, with blogs and emails. What more do I need?