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We went camping in Ocotillo Wells/Salton Sea this weekend. Daniel and I are so in love with the desert we decided to try braving the heat. It was crazy. The photo above was taken at Bombay Beach. Someone got stuck in the mud!

Daniel drove his truck and I drove with Nathaniel and Dillon in the nice air-conditioned car. I didn’t realize it, but Daniel’s truck was overheating the whole way out there. And I guess one thing you can do to keep an engine from overheating is turn on the heater. So he had the heater going full-blast in a truck with no air conditioning in 90+ degree heat.

It took us about 3 hours longer than it normally should to get out there because of traffic. Which means we got there at 9pm. We set up camp and played with my digital camera and Dillon’s tripod to get some long exposure shots. These are really fun to do on a summer night. If you use something like an iPod or a cellphone you can do light-painting in a really long exposure.

Here’s one Dillon drew a stick figure in (with Nathaniel’s iPod Touch):

In this one, Nathaniel pointed the iPod at the ground and walked around with it about a foot away from the dirt:

Then we spent an agonizing, sleepless night in the trailer. None of us could sleep. It was too hot—and any little shift any of us made was so loud it woke everyone else up. So we all laid there trying to be completely still in case anyone else was actually asleep. I did hear the boys snoring at some point, and they claim they heard me. I think we all got about 3 hours sleep—except maybe for Daniel, he probably got more than the rest of us.

It started getting light out about 5:30 am, and we all got up then. I went into town and took some pictures in Salton City while Daniel and the boys did some dirtbike riding.

There are lots of dead fish along the shore of the Salton Sea. It’s hard to tell in this pic, but there’s tons of them:

Most if not all of the things you see in that picture that look like lumps are dead fish. The Salton Sea is a big environmental disaster. You can read about it here.

There were also a lot of dead palm trees along the shore. But here’s a live one:

By the time I got back to camp, about an hour later, Daniel was drenched in sweat from dirtbiking in the heat and ready to go home. So we packed everything up and he drove the truck home, but Nathaniel, Dillon and I went out to Bombay Beach.

I’ve posted about it before. It’s a town on the lake that was flooded and all the trailers that were right near the lake were destroyed—buried in mud.

It’s like the apocalypse there.

I love it.

Then we headed further south to Niland, CA. Niland has a homeless community called Slab City. It attracts the hobo-hippy type of homeless people. There used to be a military base there, but it was closed down and all that remains now are a bunch of concrete slabs—ideal for parking your van or bus or RV on. It’s so far out in the middle of nowhere, nobody cares that there’s a group of squatters there. But Slab City isn’t what attracted us—we went to see Salvation Mountain.

I haven’t developed any pictures of Salvation Mountain yet. Here’s one digital I took of the welcome sign:

I’ll do a post later just about Salvation Mountain. We were able to meet the builder, Leonard Knight, the sweetest old guy you could ever talk to. He gave us a tour.

Oh, and on the way to Bombay and Niland we stopped at the North Shore Yacht Club. The swimming pool is still there, but since I was last there it’s been painted over and all new graffiti has sprung up.

I love the Salton Sea.

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