Tuesday, January 29, 2013 (Rockhouse Trail, Borrego Springs, CA)

After hiking some great areas over the last two days, today we decided we would take a drive to Salton City and check out the Salton Sea area.  The area is not very pretty and I was saddened by how very desolate it was.  The smell from all of the dead fish was terrible...I couldn't imagine what it must be like in the summer when the temps are well over 100F/38C!  I did some research on the Salton Sea to find out what had happened to the area.  Here is a snippet of what I learned...

"An accident spawned a lake. The lake fed water to millions of acres of farmland, and was a booming tourist trap that withered and died to leave a ghost town in its wake, all in the course of less than a century.
In the Sonoran Desert of southern California there is a valley that, like Death Valley, lies far below sea level. Geology suggests that this valley has been flooded and dried multiple times through the eons, but so far as US history goes, the Salton Sea came into being in 1905. 

It was an accident stemming from a canal that diverted water from the Colorado River to the agricultural area of the Imperial Valley. There was an overflow, an unplanned change of course, and an inland sea was reborn.

Fish were introduced to the lake, and by 1920 it was a major tourist destination....The irrigation played a large role, with fresh water pumped up out of the lake, run over the fields where it dissolved salts out of the soil, and then the excess water just flowed downhill, back to the lake to be used again. And salts weren't the worst of it: pesticides such as DDT and Agent Orange, and residues from fertilizers were mixed in too.

The saline levels had spawned an algae bloom—a sudden increase in phytoplankton algae—that had a profound smell … some described it as rotten eggs, or (and this is my favorite) “puke on a hot sidewalk”. By the seventies the resorts and tourists were history, and it was relegated to use only as irrigating and a wildlife preserve—the latter largely because of the population boom that devoured all the wetlands in the Los Angeles area, and left migrating birds no better place to nest. It turned out to be a less than ideal wildlife preserve; in the nineties there were two separate events of mass bird deaths at the lake."

We visited three communities along the western side of the Salton Sea.  First of all, Salton City...where the above pictures were taken.

The RV Park boat launch...that doesn't really make it to the lake...

An RV park that looks like it has mainly permanent residents...

There are tons of vacant lots...as low as $6,980.00.  Steve looked at the area on Google Earth...you can see all sorts of streets but no houses.

It looks like there are a couple of areas where new homes are being built and some of them are very nice. We thought this was a rather interesting house...

After Salton City, we continued onto Salton Sea Beach...the sign at the entrance to the community was the nicest part of the whole place...

Next we went to Desert Shores...it had some nicer areas with a number of water canals with homes.





Beautiful mountain backdrop...

The beach even looked a lot better in this particular spot...an Egret.

A Pelican...

And that ended our tour of the area...not very impressive, I'm afraid.  Too bad.

After stopping at a casino for diesel ($3.90/gal) and some propane, we headed home.  We had actually been gone for over 3 hours which really surprised us.  While we were on our tour, I received an email from our son, Rob...Mom and baby have been discharged from the hospital...YAY!  That means we can have a Skype call tonight!

It was so great seeing our little grandson, Conner...he is just perfect!  We also had a great chat with Rob, Angie, and Angie's Mom, Linda, who is there from their winter home in Texas.  This is Conner at 4 days old...isn't he precious?

Monday, January 28, 2013 (Rockhouse Trail, Borrego Springs, CA)

Another beautiful start to the day as the sun comes up and and lights up the fresh snow on the mountains...what the heck...SNOW! It was forecast to be a fairly cool day with highs only up to 59F/15C.

We are going to do another hike today.  After researching all of the info we had on the park, Steve chose the trail..."Calcite Mine" described as 4 miles round trip..."This is a steep, difficult hike with no shade."  Yippee...sounds like fun...just reading the description made me tired!

After getting the backpack ready, we headed out going east on highway 22. The trail head was at mile marker 38 with parking on a pullout on the side of the highway.

(Remember to click on picture to enlarge)

It was 11:30 when we were off..."walk north to the jeep road and follow it up to the old mine area."

The views were just spectacular!

Made it!

Our previous camp at Ocotillo Wells SRVA...

A piece of calcite...

We decided to hike up to the top of this plateau...where it had been mined...

Come on Di...you can do it! Can you see me?

Salton City in the distance...

Lunch time...what a view!

Salton Sea on the left...on a clear day you can apparently see Mexico...

That dark cloud up there is the main reason that we decided we'd better get our move on and head back down.

The San Andreas fault runs past the Salton Sea. The most visible evidence today of the turbulence happening beneath the Earth's surface in the area is the white plumes of steam coming from the smokestacks of several geothermal energy plants, which are using the heat naturally produced underground to create electricity.

Time to head back down...The brown mound on the left is where we just came from...

Dust Devils in the distance...

We were back at the truck just before 2:30...after a 4.8 mile hike up into the mountains.  Another fabulous day!  Time to head home.  This is the dry lake bed in the distance behind our boondocking area...

A view of our camping area as we approach from the east...

It was really windy all day...Steve took this picture of the dust storm on the other side of the highway from our rig...

We couldn't believe it when it started to rain...it produced this beautiful rainbow...