Goodbye 2021: The Salton Sea, Yuma & Why

27th Dec 2021 – 2nd Jan 2022

Not far from the country club enclaves of Palm Desert lies the very peculiar Salton Sea. It is a place that time didn’t just forget, it completely disowned it. It is a shallow, landlocked, highly salinated body of water that sits in the Imperial Valley, over part of the San Andreas fault. Millions of years ago this valley was connected to the Gulf of Mexico, into which ran the Colorado River. Eventually sand deposits created a dam between the valley and the ocean, thus a huge inland sea was created. It has been intermittantly fed by the Colorado River, but over the ages the river has changed its course and when it flows beyond this valley the lake begins to dry up. It was last completely dry in 1580, and the last flood of the Colorado to fill it was in 1905 when the modern sea, about 15 x 35 miles in size, was created. It would have dried up again, but local farmers continued to nab water from the Colorado via irrigation canals and in the 1950s and 1960s it became a resort destination. A lake in the desert was an irrestistable recreational oasis and numerous holiday towns with hotels quickly sprouted up, catering to the watersporters and the beach bunnies. The area was also a haven for much birdlife which used the sea and its wetlands it as a stopover on the Pacific Flyover. All sounds brilliant, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately the idyll was not to last. The sea started to dry up and shrink. Salinity levels rose causing a massive fish die-off and the beaches to be littered with their rotting carcasses. Run off from agriculture polluted the water causing the flourishment of toxic algae, there were outbreaks and spread of diseases of the birdlife which also suffered massive die-off of populations. The lake bed was increasingly exposed, dried out out and then blew about as dust clouds into the resorts and communities. Within a decade or so this was no longer a very nice place to paddle about in your bikini or form a waterskiing pyramid of beauties with nine close friends. Tourism drastically declined and then followed the sad but inevitable death of the resorts, thus creating exactly the faded glory and decay that we love to visit.

We camped for two nights in a nearly deserted lakeside state park with a splendid view of the water and the westerly hills on the other side. This place is -236ft below sea level, wrecking our finely tuned endurance athletic training. The lake played host to lots of birds and the sunsets were amazing. There was an obvious demarkation where the original shoreline would have been, then the ground beyond that was a mixture of tiny shells and an oddly thick fine dry mud that became squelchy as we approached the water. A mild, festering briney odour eminated from the wet ooze. We did not need to read the numerous signs warning us not to swim in or drink the water to know that this was nasty. We fell back to camp and lit the fire pit, our first of the trip. It was great to spend some time outside in the evening and cook on a grate, but the temperature plummeted like a stone once darkness fell – banishing us to the warmth of Tin Can to eat dinner – the desert reminding us that it was winter.

As we travelled south from here along the shores of the sea we called into a old resort town called Bombay Beach which was barely clinging to its existance. The decay was pervasive and it was hard to believe that anyone still lived here. Amazingly there were a shop and a bar still functioning. The sign outside the shop was advertising lithium for sale, maybe providing some commentary on the mental health of the remaining locals, and the bar- The Ski- Inn used to ply a roaring trade to the watersport enthusiasts. Now I think more tourists like us come to take photos than actually buy a drink. Perhaps we shouldn’t do the former without doing the latter. We drove on.

Just beyond the end of the Sea is another very odd place called Slab City, an area of Wild West off-grid camping in the desert. Inhabited by an ever fluctuating population of societal margin dwellers, squatters and artists, it is an area of desert dotted with rotting, tarp-covered RVs, surrounded by various piles of detritus. With no power, running water or sewage facilities, the people living out here are carving out a different sort of existance, one that is often facilitated by illegal substances, I think. One chap, Leonard Knight (1931-2014) who lived here found that God also helped and created his own unique way of showing this, creating a ‘hillside visionary environment’ called Salvation Mountain. He painted the side of a rocky outcrop and this has also become a tourist attraction and we called in on our journey.

Our onward road took us into Arizona. Just over the border was our next stop: Yuma. We were now into our next time zone and finally out of the ‘stupidly high price for petrol’ zone that is California. On our way here we passed close enough to the Mexiacan border to see The Wall. A thing much reported and discussed during the previous US government. It was a bit surreal to se it in the flesh. Yuma itself was just a place to stop for a couple of nights. It is the site of the historic ‘Yuma Crossing’, a section of the Colorado river that was relatively easy to cross on foot and on horse, making it an important place during the European settlement of this area. Yuma is a centre for agriculture, providing 90% of all the leafy vegetables consumed in the USA. Apparently it is also the hottest, least humid and least rainy of any place in the ‘lower 48’ states. Also it has an old prison on a rocky outcrop overlooking the river with some fabulous views (probably not appretiated by by the inmates of yore) and a ‘historic downtown’ (a bit overhyped) connected to our park by a nice cycle trail along the river. We snuck into our ‘over 55s’ park by being British and hoping they wouldn’t ask. If we had been Canadian they would have charged us $10 more per night. I have no idea why. Here we bobbed about a bit. Did some touristy things, had lunch out and were slightly bemused why, other than the weather, Yuma is the winter destination for 90,000 Snowbirds.

After Yuma we continued our Sou’Eastern trajectory through Arizona. Destination Why. Why? Because it was on the way and it was called Why. Why else? Why it is called Why is apparently because two roads meet here, making the shape of the letter Y, and the chap that founded the settlement that sprung up here (in the somewhere of nowhere) wanted to call it Y. But he was refused this request, because all places that are to be recognised by the United States Postal Service need to have at least 3 letters in their names. Hence Why.

We travelled here on the 31st of Jan down a desolate road in our 4th atmosheric river of our trip. It rained and rained and rained. In the desert rain doesn’t go anywhere, it just sits in big puddles on the ground in a bemused way as if to say ‘now what do I do?’ We passed sign after sign warning us of flash flooding in the dry washes that crossed the undulating road and hoped that we arrived at our destination before that happened. We did. Why was no more than a petrol station, a cafe, 20-30 homes, a small community centre, a fire station and two RV parks.

There seemed little reason to be here but the twenty-something young man with terrible teeth that was managing our RV park was ‘Why born and bred’ and had only spent one month of his life living anywhere else. I guess not everyone needs to check out greener grasses of other pastures. We arrived in the continued hosing rain and hurriedly set up bedecked in our waterproofs. By 2pm we were installed, in dry clothes and contemplating a mild New Years Eve celebration. This hadn’t been our first choice for our New Year party. We had originally booked an RV park at a casino hotel just south of Tuscon, but the rapidly increasing numbers of Omicron made us very wary of hanging out indoors with a bunch of partying strangers. We needed to stay Covid-free for our next imminant adventure that was happening on the 2nd Jan.

The rain did stop. We did get in a short sunset stroll and we did have a lovely NYE-for-two with plenty of nice food and drinkies. We even had some party lights a’flashing. AND we even managed to stay awake until midnight. Hello 2022! More of the same old chaos?? My mantra for the next 12 months will be:

High Hopes And Low Expectations.

We chilled out on the 1st Jan and went for a longer walk in the cold sunshine. Our route took us through the other RV park in town, an off grid, spread out affair with lots of interesting rigs with big solar set-ups. This is another place folk come ‘to winter’. Lordy knows why. Good to have a ‘sticky beak’ though, as the Australians would say.