San Elijo Lagoon Ecological Reserve

The trails at San Elijo lagoon are some of my favorite in the county as they represent five of the nine habitats in the region: salt marsh, riparian, chaparral, coastal sage scrub, and grasslands. The trails are very easy with very little elevation gain making them accessible to everyone.
I love going down to the lagoon early morning at sunrise to greet the day and look for birds. Other critters that can be found around the lagoon include raccoons, coyotes, and even bobcats from the tracks that I’ve seen over the years; however, I’ve yet to see anything other than squirrels and rabbits.
Overall, this is a great area to hike with your family and a good introduction to what the region once looked like.

the lagoons are becautiful， but overall it is a little bit small than expected～ the sunshine is very strong here so make sure you make protection for your skin～

Beautiful park with many trails. Very low incline. For birders this is the best.

I love San Elijo Lagoon. I haven’t wandered all the trails in this area, but the parts I have explored are pretty awesome.
Directions: I always enter at the Rios trail head. Meaning if you’re coming from the 5 freeway, get off at Loma Santa Fe, go towards the beach, make a right onto Rios and drive until it dead ends to a cul-​de-​sac. Trail head will be on the right with good signage.
Trail: There’s a trail that goes along the water, and right before it gets dark, my favorite part is watching the still water and fish tend to pop out of the water. I only do this trail for the secretive mushroom caves. My favorite time to go is right before sunset. Easy hiking trails.

This is a pretty easy hike, although there is a pretty steep decline right at the entrance we used — which means a pretty tough incline at the tail end on your way out. But once you get down to the lagoon part, there are multiple trails to explore. I appreciated that there were occasional plant markers, but I’m no botanist. I oftentimes couldn’t tell which plants the markers belonged to. We only wandered around the reserve for a little while, but it seemed like you could easily make a longer walk or hike out of it!

Awesome place to go for a run or walk. I’ve been here a couple of times with friends and we love it. I’ve entered from Encinitas and Solana beach.

Nice place. Being from northern California I used to a lot of open space and undeveloped coastal land. It is nice to see that So Cal has some of these areas preserved. My son enjoyed the interpretation center.

This a great place to come for a walk or run on the trail that wrap around the San Elijo Lagoon. My favorite is the Santa Corina Trail on the southeast side of the lagoon surrounded by sage and coyote brush. The trail have a well maintained service with little opportunity for ankle twisting and tripping (
). Also, as you venture on the trail, the lagoon is always insight where you can see families of ducklings and a mullet jump out of the water here and there (
).
The reserve also has a visitors center provided by the the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy with bathrooms, literature regarding the area, and a small museum dedicated to the area. The volunteers inside are very friendly and provide great tip about the area and the trails.
I’ve been here once right before the sun set, and I eventually watched that sunset, and what a sunset it was.

San Elijo made for a great morning hike, I’ve never used the trails here before, so getting around was quite confusing at first. Started at the San Diego County nature center off Manchester, then I noticed the map had several trails around this area which formed kind of a loop. For me the best place to hit this trail is off of Rios Ave like Unilocal has on the address. There is ample parking there and two trail entries so you can go either way on the trail.
The downside to this trail is if you’re a runner, the path does get quite narrow, so you might constantly be having to squeeze by people or waiting for them to move. I was not able to run on this trail this time, I just did the short hike around the trails and back, but it is definitely a beautiful place to run and enjoy nature, especially since there is no bikes allowed.

Went on a nice hike here with some friends and dogs. Dogs are allowed on leash on the trails. It’s an easy, flat walk to the lagoon. Beautiful views. Saw some bird watchers on the way. It got a little warm in the summer. A fun place to check out if you have a chance.

I love this lagoon. My favorite of all the lagoons in the SD area. Why? Cause there are lots of cute little birdies. Also, if you go near the water and stay there awhile, you will notice this weird plopping noises… upon further observation, I realized these were giant silver fishes leaping a foot out of the water to catch bugs! It’s pretty cool. I also recommend coming on a cloudy day so you can get cool photos of the clouds reflected in the twisting waterways. Also pretty cool. One complaint though. The signs say keep your dog on a leash, so do it dangit! This is a nature PRESERVE. I do not care how harmless your dog is, the lagoon is basically a living museum. Your dog is not allowed to run through the waterways.

I was catching up yesterday with my long time not seen friend Ammala, who lives in Carlsbad and wanted to show me her ‘romantic spot’ that she discovered recently and where she goes with her boyfriend for (well, not so long!) walks. I have passed many times by this area and never been before, so I was nicely surprised by the beauty (it was a gorgeous summer day) of the location and the nicely paved ways, freshness of the air and the greenery and the presence of butterflies saying hi to us.
The visitor center was full with kids learning and enjoying nature, and found the ‘rooftop’ very cool and neat, great view, breeze and with some chairs to setup an impromptu picnic or have a coffee. We just did the walk/​hike closer to the visitor center, but Ammala told me there are so many other paths to lake in this San Elijo Lagoon, so looking forward to explore more. Maybe I should go back into geocaching like in the early 2000s and have a excuse to hike more!

So I guess there are a bunch of different tail heads and paths to take. I’m not sure what the name of the trail I did was but I parked off El Camino. The path started super nice and shady but ended up more open with no tree cover. We walked under the freeway to the train tracks by the beach. This was kind of fun because we encountered many different areas. Mostly the path was fairly even and smooth but that changed at different points. Some portions of the trail were really sandy which was a nice added challenge to the hike. There a also a few hills and if you go under the freeway there are some rocks. Overall this is an easy trail for all levels.

We went to this lagoon during the sunsets. This is the nicest built lagoon I’ve seen so far. The only major draw back of this lagoon is that it does not have much water as i thought it would, and the trails around the lagoon are side by side with street traffic. The buildings around the lagoon are very unique and interesting and blends artistically in the background of the lagoon. There’s not too much to see at this lagoon, at least not while i was there. I didn’t travel beyond the lagoon trails, but I hear there’s many trails outside of the lagoon. While I was there, there were not many people. The center closes at 5pm, but you can find parking outside. The trails around the lagoon are easy and nice to run around. The sunset at the lagoon was an amazing site.
This lagoon is a beautiful place. I just wish it had more.

I’ve always seen this place driving down the 5 to San Diego but finally stopped to check it out last Friday. Beautiful place! I tried to walk all the trails in one afternoon but only made it about halfway through the entire reserve, probably because I stop to take too many pictures :)

Those of you who live in San Diego County are lucky to have such a nice place close by. I’ll have to make a road trip again sometime and check out the entire East side of the reserve.

I went on one of their late afternoon guided hikes. The leader was very nice and very knowledeable about the lagoon. It was fun learning about the plants, animals and birds. It was great that we were able to see an avocet and a kite. I’m not a big nature guy but I really enjoyed exploring the lagoon.

gorgeous hike right in our backyard.
we are very lucky.
very nice trails thoughout the lagoon.
what a beautiful reserve, and they really have taken care of this area.

I’ve been meaning to scout this place out ever since I moved here. Finally had the chance today. The nature center is a great place to stop in and check out, especially for families. I stopped in to pick up some information about bird checklists and data about what birds were observed recently. Sweet!
It seems like they have events quite often. Today they had a Halloween themed event for the little guys. The Raptor Institute was there to demonstrate various raptors up close and personal. Watching the mesmerized faces of the kids, I knew that the future of our natural world depends on these kiddos finding nature as awesome as we do. Let’s not kid ourselves, I stared in awe at the owls and hawks too! :)
We took a quick hike out from the Santa Carina Trail, mostly to scope out good spots and future hikes for next time. We saw a good variety of birds, even on our short trip out. This is a really great spot for beginning birders since it is easy to access and being able to find so many birds helps reinforce their efforts.
I am excited to make this one of my usual spots!

I believe there are at least couple different areas of this lagoon that one can explore and they’re not connected to one another from what I remember. I entered from the main entrance off Manchester Ave., where the Nature Center is. This section has the shortest nature walk trail in the whole lagoon. There wasn’t very much to see. Some wildlife, but nothing I haven’t seen before.
Looking at the map, the trails on the eastern side of the lagoon, on the other side of the 5 fwy seemed to be more extensive and that’s where I should’ve gone to. It was my first time visiting a lagoon and maybe I was expecting too much. Well I feel like I can’t give a fair review since I only explored a small area of the lagoon, so I’ll leave it at 3 stars for now.

There are several trailheads, but the one we encountered was off Manchester by MiraCosta College east of the I-​5 freeway.
Enter the gates and you walk the trail until it begins to branch out by the freeway. You can continue west towards the ocean or head back east towards the other trailheads.
We continued on westbound. As soon as you hit the freeway underpass, it begins to get a little rocky so be mindful of loose rocks and sharp edges. Small path so be careful if you see others along the trail. As soon as you pass the bridge, the trail continues towards the ocean.
From that point forward is when you see a dramatic change with the scenery. Very serene and you get a first hand glimpse of the lagoon. Lots of people hike the trails, which calmed my nerves given some of the hidden areas along the way.
There are benches along the way for those who like to sit and admire the wildlife. The trail continues to North Rios Ave and then towards the beach. I didn’t make it to the end as the roundtrip would have been more than the 5 miles we did.
If I were to do this hike again, I’d start at the beach and work my way eastward and then back.