Trips | CasaRodante - Our House on Wheels

Valentine’s day when traveling is kind of odd. Neither Roxie nor I had any time to get the other anything related to Valentine’s day. I usually remember to get something before I leave if I know we will be gone but not this time. Sigh. So we agreed to go have Valentine’s lunch in a local town and the only local town was Mecca. Population 8577 (Salute!).

Before we left we thought we would take a walk down on the sandy beach by the Salton Sea:

Looks somewhat inviting, until you get to it and see it is like this:

Barnacles, or what is left of the dead ones. Billions of them. At least 100 feet wide to the shore. Good thing we had shoes on. Closer to the shore were hundreds of Tilapia carcasses, very old and dry. These are two of the many problems facing the Salton Sea.

The sea is more alkaline that the ocean and is currently only sustaining Tilapia and Mudfish. However when it gets hot the algae blooms and exhausts all the oxygen in certain areas. This is what kills the Tilapia. It is a cycle that is only getting worse as time goes by and the sea get more alkaline.

Our camp host tells us about the barnacles. General Patton trained his troops around this area before/during WWII. There is a museum for him at Chiriaco Summit (where we almost stayed on the way out). It appears that they brought ocean going amphibious crafts into the Salton Sea, the barnacles dislodged and started reproducing madly here. I can buy that.

I remember going to the Salton Sea area sometimes when I was a kid but Roxie has a vivid memory. Not being a strong swimmer at the time she was wading in the sea when she came to a sharp drop off underwater. She lost her footing and went under the water. She kept going up and down thinking she was going to drown. No one heard her cries for help. She finally was able to regain her footing and get back to shore. Scary stuff. In the description of the Corvina Beach area it described it having a sharp drop off. Perhaps she actually returned to the scene of the crime.

Lucky for us a soldier was left behind to guard things:

We headed to Mecca for our Sweetheart lunch. There were not many choices so we went to Taqueria Guerrero. I thought it was pretty good but not what we are used to. Any type of food is very subjective. Roxie thought it was OK also. Better than cooking.

We stopped by the Salton Sea visitors center on the way back and learned some more about the area. The sea was formed by an accidental levee breach where the Colorado River dumped its contents into the Salton Sea for 16 months! That is a lot of water.

We got back to the trailer for a relaxing evening of not doing much of anything. Sitting out, watching the sun set over the mountains and the water. When we got inside later Roxie’s stomach was really hurting her and she didn’t want to mess it up even more. She knew she had to have some dinner and asked me to make her a sandwich. Which I happily agreed to. When I served it to her I told her that this was the first time I had ever made Valentine’s dinner for her.

I will do my best to make sure it is not the last.

Well, roughing it as well as you can in an Airstream. I have felt guilty at times when I see the people in their tents scrambling around to take care of everything, especially if it starts to rain! I get over my guilt pretty quickly though.

This was our first full day (Day 12) at the Hi Jolly BLM north of Quartzsite. We got up late, because we didn’t have to do otherwise. I started tinkering on the portable solar setup I got. I made an adapter to go from the panels directly to my trailer umbilical The guy that sold me this did not recommend this as he felt directly to the batteries is the way to go. But if you know me you know I do not always take advice. After I got it all wired up I connected things and watched the Tri-metric in the trailer. I saw 13-14v and POSITIVE amps! It was working! Over the period of about 5 hours of sunlight I recouped about 10% of my batteries (200aH). I am pleased. I now have to figure a way to secure them so I don’t mind leaving them out when we go.

However leaving them out this day was not an issue. We did not go ANYWHERE! Well, except for a short bike ride around the BLM area. This is pretty rare for us, not going anywhere. I think we were so tired of going place every day on the trip that we just needed some downtime. It was great.

We got up the next day, again not early, and broke camp. Hooked everything up and got on the road. We were going to see about camping at a location I read about in a blog entry. Corvina Beach campground in the Salton Sea State Recreation Area. We stopped off in Blythe for lunch at 11am (local) since we were still on Arizona time. Leaving Blythe I decided we would take hiway 78 southbound which took us along some farming, over a mountain range, across some sand dunes and into the Imperial Valley. Then it was a short jaunt up hiway 111 to the site.

For some reason I went straight south out of Blythe instead of heading west to catch 78. This was most fortuitous for us. We had just done 2 nights of dry camping so we wanted to fill up on fresh water and dump the grey. We passed a city park (Miller park) and I saw a sign that said something about ‘dump’. I circled around and found it actually said “Don’t Dump Waste” right near a grate with fresh water spigots (there were actually 3 of these). I lined up the trailer to fill it with water and we did so. I then tried to call the City of Blythe to ask if it was OK to dump grey as I don’t consider it waste (that is the black tank). I could not get through to them so I made an executive decision.

I turned the trailer around and dumped the grey. It didn’t take long and I was at ease in doing so.

As we headed north in the Imperial Valley I knew we were going to go through Niland. What is in Niland? Salvation Mountain! I have been wanting to go here for years so we too a little side trip.

It is very interesting in every sense of the word. Check out their website to read about it. It is something everyone that everyone should see once, if you have a desire to. Below is a photo gallery of it. On the way out we saw a guy ride by on a regular bicycle that had been elongate about 6 feet. Then we saw a small sedan with couches on top and about 15 people piled in. We heard on of the volunteers tell some people that they should come out and camp, volunteer and then go take a bath in a local hot spring. Wow.