Gates to nowhere
Close to our new home is a former salt production facility. They used to extract salt from the saline water of the bay.
From the plane (or on satellite images or Google maps) you can recognize these areas, because they all have different colors from the sky. It looks like somebody has been coloring the water. But in reality the color depends on the mix of bacteria and other life in the water. When you're approaching such an area on foot or by car though, the water is just like in a normal lake.
The Alviso Marina marsh and lake you see here has been converted into a nature reserve. It is not necessarily pretty, but it is a quite quiet serene scene in the middle of the hectic valley life. And as is the case with many American nature reserves, they close the area up for the night. Hence the two gates in this picture.
