Salton Sea | Middle of Nowhere in the California Desert
From LA, drive eastward, out beyond Coachella, and take a right turn past nowhereland. There, in the middle of the desert, lies California’s largest body of water, the Salton Sea. It was dumped there by accident when an engineering mistake of epic proportions diverted the Colorado river into the hottest part of the valley. When it didn’t evaporate, opportunistic real estate developers turned it into a resort town. But with its lack of tributaries or rainfall, the sea just became saltier and saltier and is now significantly saltier than the ocean. Fish died in the millions, people fled, and they left behind a crazy post-apocalyptic ghost town.
One day in January, four friends and I piled into a car from LA and met my friend Junshien, who drove up from San Diego, at Salton Sea. See our bizarre adventures below.
The peaceful serenity and surreal natural beauty of a lake in the desert belie the creepiness of this place.
First you’re just walking along in the sand, but then as you look down, you realize the “sand” is really tons and tons of pulverized fish bones. There are dead fish everywhere. There are still a bunch of fish surviving in the salty lake, and they are mostly tilapia. This makes me very suspicious of tilapia.
Welcome to Junshien’s house.
And welcome to Ming’s trailer as well.
Feed the hungry zombies in blue plaid. This was not planned beforehand, but somehow, Ming, Junshien, and Dan all had matching blue plaid shirts.
The images of me were taken by Junshien. I look entirely too comfortable and happy in this bombed out car with no wheels and too many spider webs.
Just southeast of Salton Sea is Salvation Mountain, one man’s psychadelic Alice-in-Wonderland-esque ode to Jesus out in the desert. I cannot explain it. I can only show you.
After the sensory overload, we drove over to the mud pots, which are bubbling geologic features that are not very attractive. Let’s just say, if Zeyen had miscalculated this jump, it would not have been pleasant.
As a final stop, we headed back toward the Salton Sea to see if we could catch sunset. This was a dried up part of the lake completely encrusted in a thick layer of salt that almost looked like snow or sand.
If this entire trip looked surreal and slightly insane, that’s because it was. But we had an amazing time! If you’d like to know more about Salton Sea, I’d highly recommend watching this video: The Accidental Sea. It’s very well made and is what initially enticed us into checking it out ourselves.
