Salton Sea and Salvation Mountain!

Today the Blankenbillers left to go back home. We are sad about that because we had a great week with them!! Terri texted Patty to let us know they got back safely.

The post today is about yesterday Saturday October 6th. We did a lot Saturday so let me apologise in advance for a very long post..................

Scott wanted to go to the Salton Sea. You know that Patty and I are game to go see almost anything so we were up bright and early. The girls first wanted to go to College of the Desert (COD) to the "street fair" they host every Saturday and Sunday. It is really large. We spent several hours there.

The first stop was the North Shore Beach and Yacht Club.

North Shore Beach and Yacht Club

This was built in the 60's and at the time was the largest Marina in California. It was a hopping place with boats docked there owned by the Beach Boys, Jerry Lewis and the Marx brothers. In 1981 major storms flooded the marina as well as the salinity from agriculture runoff ruined the jetty making in impossible to dock here. By 1984 it was closed and left to disappear

In 2009 the Riverside County spent $30 million to restore the property. Although the building looks nice now, the property and marina are still trashed!

The white "rocks" on the jetty are actually pelicans.

Pelicans

We then went to the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. We received directions how to get to Slab City and Salvation Mountain. As the sign says we wee 281 feet BELOW sea level!

-281 feet

We were also told we should stop at Bombay Beach on the way to Salvation Mountain.

Bombay Beach

The town was founded as a private development in 1929. In 1976 and again in 1977 the town was flooded by tropical storms. The waterfront and a mobile home park were destroyed. The ruins still "stand" today. There are dead fish laying around far from the water.

Dead Fish

The ground has a powdery chemical look to it. It is probably dirt and salt mixed.

Ruins

This must be what they call the waterfront ruins.I believe this once was a pier. Lots of pelicans everywhere.

Waterfront

The shoreline is covered with fish skeletons. 

Fish bones

Here is one of the buried trailers. It is weird that they just left them here from the 70's!

Buried Trailers

Best friends enjoying themselves!

Patty and Terri

We continued down the road to Salvation Mountain. This is a work of love from a guy named Leonard Knight. He went off the grid many years ago, but wanted to share the love of Jesus through this huge work of "art". 

Salvation Mountain

Salvation Mountain was the inspiration for Third Day's Revelation album's cover art. It is made out of local adobe mud, hay, tree branches and over 100,000 gallons of paint.

The mountain

Leonard felt that the more paint he put on, the stronger the mountain became. At once point the county decided it was an eyesore and wanted it torn down. (If you saw slab city down the road from it you would see what a joke that was)! They took soil samples and said there was lead poison issues. That was ludicrous since all he had used was latex paint, and for years you haven't even been able to buy leaded paint.

He had independent studies taken and there was NO lead found in the surrounding soils!

Shown to be false studies, the county backed off and haven't messed with him since. In fact Congress has actually named Leonard and Salvation Mountain as a National Treasure! Yep that's Scott up there..

National Treasure

That's me up the yellow brick road. It goes all the way up the mountain. I chose not to go up any further because the steps are off camber and kind of spongy. Scott did go to the top.

Yellow Brick Road

The B's camera card got filled up, so Patty went part way up and met Scott with our camera so he could take some pictures from the top. Here Patty is going back down.

Patty going down the mountain

There are passageways and tunnels in the mountain. Leonard used tree branches and some 2 x 4's to shore it up, and of course lots of paint!

Tunnels

God is Love! This is in one of the tunnels. This was Leonards main message. I say was because Leonard is no longer living here. He checked himself into the hospital with dementia  At this point nobody is officially taking care of the mountain, but there is a group trying to get together to maintain it. Without maintenance the mountain will go away and that will be a shame!

God is Love

The cross is at the top of this. John 3:16 is what it is all about! 'For God so loved the world he gave his only Son' is painted all over the mountain!

The Cross

We drove just about a mile down the road to Slab City.

Slab City

OK, I get getting out of the rat race! Patty and I did just that. It is the best thing we ever did! Of course we planned for it. We needed to do our time so we could get out. What I don't get is this! Slab City! This is just plain weird. This is just too far off the grid. No electricity, no water, no sewer, no trash, NADA! 

Slab City is an old retired marine base that has the slabs left over from the demolished buildings. Here is what happens when you totally check out....

Average Slab City resident

We left Slab City very quickly, not for us! 

We went to the Salton Sea mud pots. This is a thermal event, however they were not bubbling so we continued on.

Mud Pots

We read about a slot canyon called Painted Canyon. If it wasn't so hot we could have hiked more of it, but we wanted to go look anyway.

We drove about 5 miles back on a sandy wash. We got out and started walking up the canyon.

Slot Canyon

We continued up the canyon.

Narrowing down

The canyon started getting real rocky. We realized that the walls had caved in, and this was probably not the correct trail. We turned around and went back up the larger canyon.

Dead End

We went a little further, but after the long day the girls really didn't want to go any further. Frankly that was alright with me. 

Larger Canyon

We turned around and headed back to the truck.

Back to truck

We got back to the truck and realized we were all pretty hungry. We had only had some snacks, and no lunch. There really was no place to eat lunch on out trip and we didn't bring sandwiches. 

We decided to stop at Mario's Italian Cafe near our campground to eat dinner. We shared a large antipasto salad, and a large pepperoni and olive pizza. I don't know if it was because we were so hungry, but it was really good!

Got back home and went to the pool and hot tub.

What a wonderful day with great friends!

We will be back in town on Tuesday for 3 months. See you all then!

God Bless you,

Brian and Patty