| Audrey E. Austin Jr. Memorial Park and Ballona Lagoon Walkway are narrow parks alongside waterways. Memorial Park lies between a parking lot and the entrance channel to Marina del Rey. It’s a great place for watching boats. Across the street from the Memorial Park parking lot, the Ballona Lagoon Walkway runs alongside a remnant of the wetlands that were diked and filled in the 1960s. This is a great bird-watching spot.
Once slated for conversion to boat docks, Ballona Lagoon was preserved through the efforts of local citizens, the Coastal Conservancy, and the City of Los Angeles. From the walkway you might see blue herons, egrets, and various small shorebirds, including the endangered California least tern, which nests in a fenced enclosure on Venice Beach. Watch out for gaps between the pavement and the guardrail, and drainage grates with slots wide enough to catch a caster. There’s also a pair of steps about a third of a mile down the path.
Parking
A metered parking lot on Via Marina has blue spaces. Parking is scarce on weekends when the crowd from Venice Beach overflows to Marina del Rey. There are no restrooms at these parks.
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