In my last post I took a walk along Santa Monica Creek north from El Carro Lane toward the mountains. This time I thought I’d take a walk in the other direction, from El Carro toward the salt marsh.
Near El Carro stands a tall sycamore, one of the last big trees along this part of the creek. Here’s a view looking up into its branches.
A little ways south of the sycamore, a footbridge crosses the creek. There are big bottlebrush bushes on each end of the bridge, with tons of bees (and Selasphorus hummingbirds). Here’s a shot looking north from “bottlebrush bridge”:
Here’s a view looking south from the bridge toward Via Real:
Down at Via Real, here’s the view looking back north:
Here’s the view looking south, across Via Real to the 101 freeway:
If you cross the freeway at Santa Ynez Avenue and head west along Carpinteria Avenue, you can rejoin the creek at the Carpinteria Avenue crossing. Here’s William looking north from there, with the 101 freeway in the distance:
Here’s the view looking south from a point along Sandyland Cove Road, toward the railroad crossing and the salt marsh:
Finally, here we are at the point where the concrete creek channel ends, looking back north past the railroad bridge toward the mountains:
Here’s the view from the end of the channelized creek looking south. Santa Monica Creek has now become a dredged channel through the salt marsh, winding toward the marsh entrance and the Pacific Ocean. That’s a young mute swan standing in the channel, just beyond a couple of American coots.
