Biking Around San Diego Bay

Today, we rode our bikes around most of San Diego Bay, a distance of 23 miles.

Yeah, we found a free parking spot for Blue, about a mile north of the Convention Center, and unloaded the bikes.

The retired aircraft carrier Midway is now a naval aircraft museum.

A giant recreation of a famous WWII era photo taken in Times Square on VJ Day.  The 25 ft. sculpture, officially called "Unconditional Surrender", is known as the "Kissing Statue" by locals.  It is despised by some and liked by others.

From this angle, the sailor looks like a vampire sating his thirst!

Pedaling south, we came upon this building that was being entirely painted in an ocean motif.

Octopus, with mirrors for eyes.

 

Continuing our ride south along the eastern shore, we passed under the Coronado Bridge.

 





This great blue heron was very close to people on this fishing pier.

 

Special platforms were built for osprey nests, as they must have been nesting in the nearby naval yards on light poles or such.  This nest was festooned with plastic shipping bands.

There is a large salt pond operation down near the south end of the bay in National City.  Here, we are about 4 miles from the Mexican/U.S. border.  The area, unfortunately, was riddled with homeless camps and garbage.  Not long afterward my front tire went flat, but we rode on.

 

We rounded the bottom of the bay and started northward up Coronado Island.  There is much protected habitat along this stretch.  We saw 2 ospreys, American Wigeons, Great Egrets, and a beautiful Reddish Egret, which is a rare visitor from Mexico.  The Reddish Egret was running through the water chasing fish, very unlike Snowy and Great Egrets.  Earlier in the ride, we saw another osprey and a Belted Kingfisher.

The Coronado side of the bay is quite picturesque, and offers great views of  the San Diego skyline.

 

We rode the ferry back across to the Convention Center.  The weather was perfect all day!

 

Luxury yachts of the very rich.  It would be interesting to know who owns such ships!  We ended our big loop with a bike ride back to Blue, then it was a race home to get the cats back in the house.