On to Slab City

We went to bed early last night, and we were up this morning before sunrise. As the sun came up it coloured the mountains around us with various shades of pink and purple, and we sat outside beholding the beauty while having our morning coffee. Last evening as we were retiring, the wind came up, and it rocked the motorhome for a few hours, but then suddenly stopped again. It felt like we were on a boat in an unsheltered anchorage! After breakfast, we drove into the town of Borrego Springs, and Doreen went to her favorite store, the Borrego Outfitters (the most expensive store on the planet!) I, in the meantime sat outside the local library, where they have chairs and benches where you can connect to the internet over their very good WiFi.

After more walking around Borrego Springs and looking in all the shops, we finally took off late morning, and traveled down around the south end of the Salton Sea, and up the other side. This area is all a couple of hundred feet below sea level. It's well irrigated, and there are large fields of various crops that look like spinach or beets, and onions.

Just a few miles outside of Borrego Springs we came across this miltary airplane/helicopter (I believe it's called an Osprey), that landed in the desert beside where we were traveling. It raised a huge - a tremendous - cloud of dust, as it landed. Then off it went again.

Along the way, we passed a place we've passed several times before, where they have cows - thousands of them - packed like sardines into a huge field. This isn't a very good picture, but it seems to me that this is very cruel!

Just a few miles further north, just in from the town of Niland, lies Slab City, (N33 15 26.8, W115 28 07.4) where we came to camp for the night - a place like no other. At the entrance to Slab City, you pass by "Salvation Mountain." This is a place on a small hill that an old fellow name Leanard Knight spent numerous years building out of adobe and paint.

The pictures here are from a previous trip we made to slab city. Leanard, who you see here with Doreen deep down inside the structure just died a couple of weeks ago. He had been ill in hospital for a year or two, and a group of Slab City residents have been continuing to keep Salvation Mountain from deteriorating. I need not describe Slab City, you can click on the link above to get the whole story of the place.

The weather is much the same as we had in Borrego Springs, and you could sit outside in the evening without feeling at all chilled.