Life's a Stitch

Looking over my photos from that January day, I realized I must have been in the mood for angles. It was a day of sightseeing in the desert with C's cousin and his wife. We headed south along the Salton Sea, that body of brown water that used to be nicknamed the Salton Riviera, a haven for the rich and famous near Palm Springs in the 50's. It has a detailed sad ecological history that you can read about here.

This one seemed like the angle of destruction. A train, hundreds of cars long, carrying a deadly cargo of military vehicles painted in the camo of Middle Eastern war. Think armoured vehicles, tanks, personnel carriers and infantry fighting machines that went on for a loooonnnnggg time.

It was our Atlas Obscura day, leading us to fluky locations worthy of lengthy description, but I'll try to limit myself to a sentence or two of each.

First stop was Salvation Mountain…..Lots of shapes in there, like a rainbow sand castle, in reality clumps of concrete painted in pastels.

History:

Up the road was Slab City and its subdivision, East Jesus, an art park constructed of recycled junk.

Oddly it isn't what you'd expect with a name like that. There was little religion, more philosophy and oddly a flavour of American patriotism, what with all the flags flapping in the desert breeze.

More angular photos along the way:

Bombay Bay, the town where it used to happen. A graveyard of building remnants, motels, clubs and bars, and a beach made not of sand, but the crushed dried bones of birds and fish, long killed off by the saline brownish liquid, I hesitate to call it water, of the Salton Sea. Not to be abandoned, enter the art installations. It proves there can be beauty, or an interpretation of it, anywhere.

Even the tire marks were creative:

The golden hour was perfect for our version of a selfie.

One more angular wonder. A couple of days prior, we attempted to go hiking at Whitewater, the other side of Palm Springs. We were turned around by a ranger, suggesting we try the Mission Creek trail, a few miles away, as the park was closed due to a helicopter roundup of feral cattle. Our disappointment was quashed a couple of minutes later when we were forced to stop the car to allow a herd of big horn sheep to cross the road. I was torn between taking the time to dig out the camera or to watch this rare spectacle unfolding before us. This is one for the camera of the brain. After they crossed I followed well behind and got this shot of them in the distance. Look carefully.

In case you are wondering, they're not the angular part of the story. The Mission Creek Trail is located on the site of another long gone resort. The shells of the abandoned cabins have been made into picnic shelters.

The sun was just right to capture this: