Lake Elsinore Lakeshore, California, January 26, 2014

Jan 26 - A casual beach stroll

OK, I just might have overdid it yesterday. I haven't walked anywhere near 12 kms for a few months now. And I really felt it last night!

So today we decided to check out some more of the shoreline of Beautiful Lake Elsinore.

It turns out that there is not a whole lot to check out.

Yes, there are a few public beaches. But these are interspersed with private property signs - there are a lot of little shabby cottages that back onto the lake, and apparently they own the shoreline too.

So we ended up walking along the street that runs parallel to the beach.

The signage indicates that there is only one beach on the lake where a person could go swimming. There are a few spots where you are permitted to go wading.

But on looking closely at the water, it was apparent that one really doesn't want to swim in this lake. It was pretty green - a significant algae problem. We were chatting with a paddle boarder, who said that every so often they let the boaters really rev it up, in an attempt to stir up the water and maybe help to clear the algae. But it's too little to help, really. Additionally, he told us that there are a whole bunch of submerged rocks, submerged but close to the surface, and swimmers could run into them quite easily.

So, all in all, the hotel pool seems a better option.

Here's the story of today's stroll - about 4 kms.

First, a Google Earth shot showing both yesterday's and today's walks.

And a close-up of just today's walk.

An interesting concept: life jackets on loan.

The whole area looks like a desert. So we were quite surprised to see this chunk of greenery along a little creek that runs into the lake (which actually has no outlet). On Google Earth, this little creek looks more like a canal, but close-up, it's a creek.

There's the lake.

There's more of the beach.

There were a lot of fisher-folk trying to catch tonight's supper.

And a funky bird - a black-necked stilt.