Famosa Slough

This may be one of my favorite local spots to take a nice afternoon walk. I usually spend at least one hour a day biking, hiking, swimming or walking around and this right here is one of my number one spots for that walking! It’s right off W. Point Loma which is a fairly busy road but, once you get into the Slough all that will disappear. You can walk for a good 20 – 30 mins around the water and back and you feel like you have transported to a nature oasis. There’s lots of life and plants through out the Slough and I’ve even been told you can catch Halibut there. It’s right down the street from my house and if a quick little walk is all I have time for this is the perfect solution for that! There are multiple locations to enter the Slough and I have used them all at one time or another.

A 37-​acre wetland and wildlife preserve tucked in between condos and the freeway. A unique place to take a walk and enjoy the birds, wildlife, flowers and trees. Over 190 species of birds have been observed here. Dogs on leashes are allowed.
Although 37 acres seems large, the historic wetland was huge, and once covered a lot of the surrounding area, including what is now Mission Bay Park. Some reviews have mentioned Mosquitos, but we always come early in the morning when it’s cooler, and have never had a problem.
NOTE: there are 2 parts to the slough, the part on the south side of W. Point Loma has more walking trails, and less road noise, but both are nice.

«So is it pronounced ‘sloo’? Or is it more like ‘slow’? Or kinda like ‘slaow’?»
According to Merriam-​Webster, it’s «sloo», but
claims it can also be pronounced «slaow» (rhyming with cow).
What I actually say when I’m around Famosa Slough is «SHOOO!!!» because this place is a mosquito haven. It is the perfect environment for them so they just hang out here and do a number to my dogs and I. I live nearby so these bastards get into the house sometimes, too.
It is beautiful, though. Yes – I said it – it’s beautiful. Famosa Slough is more than just a place where the local high school potheads «hang out». There are some short paths around the wetland that dogs surely enjoy. They even provide high quality dog poop bags at the entrance, which has a dirt parking lot and a port-​o-​potty. I don’t know much about birds, but apparently the bird-​watching is great in the area, too. There is some construction going on in the area to fix some leaky sewer pipes to stop further pollution to our slough, so hopefully the beauty of the area will be preserved for years to come.
When you look around, you can tell that this area was THIS close to becoming just another condo or apartment complex, but I’m really glad it didn’t. I’ll take the mosquitoes over concrete and drywall.

So how do you pronounce this place? Sloff? Slow? Slew? Slouff? Had an argument with a friend who’s always right — she didn’t want to go with the way I say it — slew. So whatever. I like this place. Peaceful at night to sit on a bench on the south side of Point Loma Boulevard and just vegetate and listen to the birds. Not really all that into Ornithology unless it’s that jazz ditty by «Bird» but this is a cool place to walk through to get away from it all if you take the path that goes into it instead of staying on Point Loma when you walk by the slough. The Slough pretty much divides Ocean Beach from Midway — nice big landmark on any map of the area. And heck if the economy never recovers and things get really really really really bad I have some good snowy egret casserole recipes…

A vast wetland preserve literally in my backyard!
Animals, wildlife, plants, galore…
I like it because it offers a venue if I need to take Bella on a quick walk through one of its trails. Though – the trails aren’t very long or bountiful for that fact.
I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking through here by myself at night as you often see remnants of random alcohol bottles, traces of «mini camps», and other sketchy items.
But when all is said and done, it’s great that there’s an established preserve area in my community. :)

The slough is cool, not a whole lot to it besides the trail and some wildlife. Its a good spot to kick back and think for a while in peace though, and i support the efforts to keep it a part of OB.
The «roadwork» is STILL going on all around the surrounding streets. No wonder the city claims its broke and the school system is in shambles, the people doing the roadwork are obvious products of a school system in shambles because they cant seem to get anything sensible done. In the rare instance a road does appear to be repaired, eh, they come back and dig it up in a few months and start over again; which leads me to believe that the «foremen» actually running the construction show, are probably not products of a school system in shambles, but rather, very smart individuals who have figured out how to continuosly milk the blind taxpaying people of SD for their $ 45 an hour paychecks while they create infinite potholes and pollution!
Another example of our societal imbalances. The people volunteering (key word volunteer) actually care about the environment and the living creatures within the environment and whose work is priceless (and appreciated by far too few). All the while ya have the destroyers of our environment working the system over and over again getting their fat paychecks chuckling as they watch the birds drop dead and your car rims get bent.
But hey, who cares, you can go watch American Idol tonight and forget all about it. Awaken my fellow humans, the signs of the demise are all around you, but it doesnt have to be this way.
Seven, over and out.

I used to live next to Famosa Slough and when it didnt smell it was a cool place to watch birds. There would be a Belted Kingfisher that would sit on the power line, he was cool to watch diving in the swamp for a fish.
The south side of the slough has been cleaned up luckily, during the 80’s you would find piles of old concrete and dumped tires there.

Here is another update on the goings-​on at Famosa Slough.
I know there’s been lots of activity recently with the City of San Diego digging up the streets around the Slough. Workers are currently replacing old underground pipes that have decayed and broken down over the years. The number of sewage leaks that have occurred has increased and of course-​the outfall ends up in the Slough wetlands.
Monitoring of water quality in the area showed the high bacteria to be sewage contamination and the culprit was traced back to leaking city sewer pipes. Even though the street closures and re-​routing of traffic has been noisy and a big hassle-​it is a necessary evil in order to stop the pollution at Famosa Slough. The filtering reed plants that were planted off Valeta Street have done a great job at cleaning up the water visibility and keeping down the algae levels during the summer.
As a result, the large bird populations are back-​wintering in the waterways and drawing lots of «birders» with their binoculars and camera’s. In fact now there are «birding tours» that pay a call here to photograph and gawk at the variety of wildlife at the Slough. I have seen large numbers of pintail ducks and the sand-​pipers are numerous. Occasionally, some pelicans will show up and then there are always the «winged rats” – pigeons and sea gulls.
But this vibrant display of winter birds is proof that Famosa is a healthy and vital marine wetland that can support a large variety and amount of fine-​feathered friends. That is the entire purpose of all the hard-​work and sweat of the brow that goes into keeping this little slice of nature something to be proud of.