Martin Luther King, Regional Shoreline

So there were meant to be about 12 photos here, but I see Picasa can only send 4 photos at a time to Blogger. That's a bit of a let down. I uploaded the 1600pixel images to here. I also have an entry over at Montgomery Pictures, my photo only blog.

Nestled between an industrial park and the Airport, this is an unlikely area for a nature reserve, but indeed that is what we have. This park, opened in 1998, is a wetland restoration project.

The land lies between an industrial park whose growth was limited by San Leandro Channel, the Estuary, an Airport (employee) parking lot on Swan way, and the San Leandro Estuary and the the old aerodrome on the other side.

Apart from the interesting sculptures, a model of the Bay Bridge (?) and two huge steel dishes, there is a great deal of nature (walking to sculpture, with camera to eye, I almost fell down at least a dozen gopher holes. I was trying to be careful. The wetlands are doing their job, though I must confess the Canada Geese seem to prefer the populous Lake Merrit, only two being present here. Still, billions of little waders and assorted water fowl.

The following image is just a couple of kids playing on the dishes, but for some reason it looks like some people emerging from a flying saucer that has crash landed. I like it. There is also a play area for the kids, as if acres of gopher holes to fall into wasn't enough fun. This is the sort of play structure that's popular in a regional park, a whale breaking out of the Pacific.