Officially Past Hump Day and Middle of the Month, Salton Sea Beach, New Acquaintances

Thursday, Feb. 16^th I was up and at ‘em early. I was so tired last night (from what??) that I was in bed by 9:15. This meant, of course, an early start to my day today. At 6:10 my eyeballs popped open and I peeked out the blind to catch the start of a beautiful sunrise. I’ve missed these so no hesitation there, I quietly got up and out the door with my Canon.

I was able to grab a few shots of the pink sky before the sun peeped up over the mountains to our east. Sadly, last night we missed the International Space Station fly over at 7:30 pm after receiving an email of its possible sighting. I hope we get another notice today so we can set a reminder to get outside and look. We love following these back home, each one finds us staring up into the night watching until it disappears.

Bill got up around 7 and the temperature started to rise with the heat of the sun. It was only 53F but no wind out there at all. Another gorgeous day in paradise. Here we are on the downside of February, two days past the middle of the month. Each day now becomes more precious as our time is limited here in the southwest.

Angel wing clouds?

Great day for a walk

I guess we all have idiosyncrasies, and I am certainly no different with probably 3 or 4 tucked away in my personal self. One is that when we arrive at a new camping location, whether a park or open desert, I feel a bit “intimidated” about my first walk about.

an abandoned structure

This may be silly, but as I am usually on my own I tend to feel trepidation about where I’m headed, what I might encounter and will I get lost. Anyway, here it is day 3 since our arrival date and I hadn’t walked anywhere yet. Today was the day so before my first tea, I took my walking stick and headed back towards the mountains.

Quite the view in the peacefulness of the morning

Curiosity of this Clark dry lake bed kept me going

Clark dry lake bed is the sandy flat land ahead

On my way back, not a soul in sight
See what I mean by intimidating?
Courage, are you there?

Courage found me as I walked and so did Confidence. They are a couple of my dearest friends and I welcome them in new ventures, especially when I am alone. Part of the journey was on the sandy/gravel road and partly up on the desert floor. I took my time yet still walked at a decent pace. Once I started I had no desire to stop but common sense turned me around at the ¾ mile point towards home. Now that first day is out of the way, there will be more treks to come before we leave here.

Even though it means 3 days in a row of doing something and we originally thought we’d explore one day, rest one day etc. here we were heading out again. Well, heck, maybe we’re just getting younger and have more ambition all of a sudden! See what this lifestyle does to us?

Today we decided to go check out Salton Sea, 350 sq. miles of the state’s largest lake. We drove by it on our way in on Hwy 86 so headed back out that way to see how close we could get. As we were pulling out of our site we stopped to meet Tom and Deb from Celebrating the dance.

They are in the brightly coloured motor home behind us and are also bloggers. I borrowed this picture from George's blog post.

George from Our Awesome Travels informed us that they were nearby. Since we’d not made their acquaintance yet, it was an opportune time. We chit-chatted for a few minutes and planned to connect after we get back.

More beautiful sights along the way

  Bill found a road that took us right down to the beach, well close to the water. It was a large sandy/gravelly/boney (ew!)/salty area that we at least able to walk down and take pictures of the sea. 

Pretty to look at

Now there is a nice view

You can easily see where the sea is shrinking  with such a large flat beach area.

The white salty sand and my sweetie

There was no major smell today, until we got right down by the water’s edge and then we turned back anyway. Lots of fish carcasses and who needs to experience that? Can’t imagine them cleaning this area up for the public to re-visit but who knows? 

That is the rumour. It was a nice opportunity to see something we’ve heard of and snap some photos.

Leaving there Bill turned east back towards Desert Shores hoping to find a sign we saw on Monday leading us to the actual “Salton Sea Beach” or “Salton Sea Recreation Area”. We found one of those signs and it looked impressive, lovely bright colours to attract the touristy eye.

Attractive, no?

Oh my goodness, we couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I wouldn’t get out of the truck and thank goodness it was in the middle of a day. Let’s go home! Not welcoming at all with many dilapidated (putting it mildly) park model trailers.

this is only one of the many things we saw on the way to
the Salton Sea beach

On the way back on Borrego Salton Seaway (S22) we pulled over for a couple of photos of the Badlands and rocky canyons along the side of the road. This totally made up for what we’d just witnessed. Our cell service was pretty good along here with no cut-outs so we called Dad to answer a question he had about exactly where we were camped.

 When we pulled into our area we detoured past our Suite and went as far as the flat sandy canyon. It wasn’t a box canyon since there seemed to be an exit if we’d kept on going. Unless you know where roads end up, sometimes it is better to play it cool and turn around. That is what we did.

Back home, we settled outside with our books in the partially sunny sky. It is fun to take off on new adventures and even better when the winter weather is in our favour. We are in a spot close enough to the Seaway to see a number of rv’s passing, looking for places to stay but far enough away that the noise of their vehicles is not bothersome.

While refueling at the Arco station
this Ford pulled in beside us

Pictures are for my brother, Michael's benefit
Actually Mike K would probably get a kick out of this too

Nice owner too

The forecast for the next couple of days could bring 40% chance of showers so we’ll see if we sit tight tomorrow or go early into Borrego Springs to the market at Christmas Circle.

The air was turning cooler, as it typically does here in the desert around 4:00 so I changed into long pants and we took our chairs over to Tom and Deb’s. They were sitting out so it was a late Happy Hour.

Tom, Deb and Bill

Lots of stories of driving the hills and mountains in our respective rv’s, around the twists and turns and in and around some of the campgrounds on our destination lists. Everybody has a scary story and everyone also had some good suggestions of where to go next. That is the wonderful thing about this lifestyle, we are all happy to share our experiences.

After an hour or so it turned chilly and Deb and I caught the beautiful sky on our cameras before saying goodnight. 

Unfortunately, just before we left we all noticed that a motor home had pulled in front of our unit. Like, seriously? With the wide-open spaces of this desert they needed to be within 50’ of our front door.

Well, maybe they won’t stick around too long, we ‘could’ be annoying if we try hard enough. Ha ha, just kidding! Bill barbecued up the burgers I made and before too long we had eaten and dishes were cleaned up. I can treat myself again to our strawberry-rhubarb pie because I skipped the buns, my own personal pat on the back.

We decided to watch a bit of tv tonight so started the generator instead of letting our batteries get ridiculously low. It sure is nice not to have to turn on any heat for these warm evenings. This is more like it.

I hope your day has been a fun one too. We look forward to what is around the corner. 

Thank you for following our adventure and your comments are great!