Almost Paradise

I was in San Diego last week for a business trip. Kathy played tour guide and took me all over the place. Thanks, Kathy! This past winter’s heavy rains have transformed the usually dry golden Southern California hills into a lush green that almost felt like Hawai’i. (Well, not really.)

This is the San Diego River, which I am informed is usually just a trickle. Kathy laughed and said that only in the dry West would a little stream like this be called a river. This season, though, it was flowing quite nicely. Apparently, the river banks have been made into a protected area of some sort. Strolling along the river just a block away from my hotel, I saw a cormorant and several mallards and loons.

I was surprised to discover that San Diego has a light rail system, called the Trolley. It’s been running for more than 20 years and seems to work pretty well. It doesn’t go everywhere, but I did manage to use it to go downtown and to go omiyage shopping at the local malls. If this is the kind of system that Honolulu is considering, I’d be happy to use it. Of course, it does take up a lot of real estate — something that San Diego has plenty of, and that Honolulu doesn’t.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005 at 9:05 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.