An oasis in the desert

I know I just blogged yesterday, but I had to write again today because today was an awesome day in the desert! Alex and I went to Salvation Mountain. Some of you may not know where or what that is, but if you've seen the movie, "Into the Wild" then you have an idea of what I'm talking about. We actual never intended on going to Salvation Mountain, but we went to a church service on Sunday at Valley Baptist Church and we mentioned to one of the member's there that we were going to the Salton Sea. He told us about the whereabouts of Salvation Mountain, which is only a small detour off the hwy through the small town of Niland on the way to the Salton Sea. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the place.

The crunchy ground

We decided to go to the Salton Sea first and then hit up Salvation Mountain on our way back to Hwy 8. So, first I'll tell you about our experience at the Salton Sea. It is not a the prettiest place in the world. It's a huge body of salt water in the middle of nowhere. It is slowly drying up and the ground around it is very dehydrated. As you walk to the water you can feel the ground crunching beneath your feet. Hundreds of dead fish surround the shores. As Alex and I were walking up to the water, we were hypothesizing how the water got there and what the pioneers thought when they discovered this undrinkable water in the middle of desert. How devastating would that be to finally find water after not seeing any for hundreds of miles only to find out that you can't even drink it! I would be pretty bummed out. Well, we eventually found out the real story behind the Salton Sea from a man we met along our way to the water. In 1914 there was a break in the levee on the Colorado River. The Salton Sea is 200 feet below sea level, so the water from the river flowed down to where it is today. It took two years for the levee to be fixed. So, the water had a pretty long time to accumulate there. The water became salty due to the rich minerals in the desert. The fish were put in the water by man and since the Sea is slowly drying up that raises the salt concentration, thus causing the fish to die. So, my image of the pioneers finding the Sea never happened and someday the Salton Sea will be no more. I was glad that guy was there to tell us the story about the Sea. He was a pretty interesting guy, an ex-hippy. He has is own blog about his travels at www.godavidfrancis.com 

You can see the salt in this pic

The Salton Sea

A few of the many dead fish

Okay, now to Salvation Mountain. You can tell from the pictures why this place got it's name. We parked our car and as soon as we got out an old man, probably in his mid 80s, greets us with in a squeaky, raspy, old man voice, "Whyyyy Hellllooo!" His voice was so classic and matched is appearance and demeanor. He welcomed us and told us to feel free to explore the place. He had paint on his hands and told us to be careful of wet paint as we explored the place. Well, I guess I wasn't very careful because I stepped in the paint:/. The place is painted very colorfully with bible verses everywhere. Not only has he created beautiful art on the mountain, but he has also created a "museum," as he called it, with tree limbs, hay stacks and scrap from cars and junk. 30 years ago he broke down at that spot and he only planed on staying there a week. During that week he decided to create a monument to Jesus. That week has never ended and he is still continues to add onto his monument to the Lord, hoping it will bless those who pass by. He was such a neat guy. His art is truly an oasis in the desert.

The creator (Leonard) and Alex

The entrance to the "museum"

Wet paint, oops!

Inside the "museum"

Welcome to the Desert:)

We are officially in the desert! The desert is an interesting place. I would never want to live here, but it is a great place to visit. We went to the small town of Campo because they are supposed to have a pretty cool railroad museum, but the museum was closed and there really wasn’t much else to do in the town.  We asked a local what else there was to do in town, but there wasn’t anything else. I guess that can be expected when you are in the desert. We decided to stay at a campground not too far from Campo called Sacred Rocks Reserve.  It was a very well kept campground with nice bathrooms and great hiking trails. 

When ever I think about hiking I think about mountains, dirt and tall trees, but that is probably because I'm from Northern California. In Nor Cal there are an abundance of great mountain hikes with tons of beautiful greenery surrounding you as you hike up a mountain. Well, when you're in the desert there is a lot of dirt with mostly hills to hike and an abundance of boulders. Oh, yeah there are also cactus' and lots of shrubbery. Although, it is not as beautiful as the Sierra's, it still has a beauty of it's own; I think I might be bias to Northern California. 

Hiking

The highlight of the desert for me so far has been visiting the Desert View Tower in Jacumba, CA The Tower was built as a monument for all the pioneers who were able to cross the treacherous desert lands. It was built in the 1800s and it is four stories high built from stone. The view from the top is amazing. Next to the tower is a boulder cave that has carvings in the rocks dating back 500 years ago. The guy running the place said there were hot springs further up the hill, about a five minute hike. Alex and I followed the signs for the springs up the hill and about five minutes into the hike we come to a place with a bunch of rocks. Strangely, there were some metal springs attached to the rocks. I kind of joked and said, "Oh, look Hot Springs." pointing to the metal springs that someone attached to boulder. Alex and I giggled a bit and then kept hiking up the hill. Well, there were no more signs for the springs and there was no sign of hot water springs anywhere.  Very funny....the metal springs we saw were the "Hot Springs." I thought that was pretty clever, but I could see someone not thinking it was very funny. I guess it depends on your sense of humor. 

View of the desert from the tower

Can you see the face?

Boulder Cave

After the Desert tower we made our way to El Centro, CA. It is not the greatest town. It smells like sulfur and cow manure, and they have every chain restaurant and shopping store you can think of. It was nice to have some familiarity, but it doesn't make the place very interesting. We saw the movie "Country Song" while we were there and it was a pretty decent movie.

We are going to the see the Salton Sea and Salvation Mountain tomorrow. Salvation Mountain was in that movie "Into the Wild." I'm pretty excited about seeing it.

I Love San Diego!

We have been in San Diego for the past few days and I have absolutely loved it! San Diego is an amazing place. I have been here a few times before, but didn't really appreciate the awesomeness that San Diego exudes. If you have never been here, then please put it on your list of cities to visit before you die. It's that good! God has blessed us with warm weather and sunshine; that is always a plus. I've noticed that I have more fun when the weather is nice. Funny how that works out:) The reason why I think San Diego is so awesome is because it is beautiful, tons of site-seeing, beautiful sunsets, beautiful parks, beautiful architecture, big city, but doesn't feel over crowded, and the list could go on and on. I don't think I would ever be bored if I lived here. I now understand why the people that live here never want to leave.

Alex and I visited Old Town San Diego, which has been very well preserved to it's original layout and style. The First mission in California was built there, but was relocated to a place 6 miles away from the town due to insufficient water supply. We had a real fun time walking around. Most of the shop keepers and museum employees in Old Town are dressed up in 1800s style clothing, which adds to the old town ambiance. Alex and I learned some old gambling games and I won most of the games; I guess Alex was running bad. We watched a few ladies make a quilt together, watched a black smith pound some iron, and sampled homemade deer and buffalo jerky. All the activities in Old Town were free. I love it when I can be amused for free. It's much more satisfying.

Quilt making

Old Cathedral

Black Smith Shop

Delicious, but weird combo

Gambling

We walked quite a bit through Balboa Park. The Park is right in the middle of San Diego and it is very beautiful. We enjoyed walking through a cactus grove and then walking by the San Diego Zoo. My favorite part of Balboa Park was the part with all the museums because the buildings that the museums are in are magnificently beautiful. Extremely detailed art decorates the outside of the buildings. It was an amazing place.

Crazy cactus tree. I've never seen anything like it

The museum of Man

Indoor Botanical Garden in the background

We also walked through the Gas Lamp district, which is more towards Downtown San Diego. The Gas Lamp district wasn't too spectacular, but still a very enjoyable experience. The bums like to hang out in that area, and it looks much like any other downtown area that has lots of old buildings and sky rises. On our way through the Gas Lamp area we walked through Seaport Village. It's a really cute village with little shops and restaurants. It has small town charm amongst a huge downtown sky scraper area. 

Seapoat Village

We did have a few problems with our van since we've been down here in San Diego. We weren't really sure what the problems were, but something was wrong. We got the oil changed and the mechanic told us that the suspension needed to be fixed because there was abnormal wear on the front left tire. Alex didn't pay much attention and we went on our happy way. Later Alex took a look at the tire to see how much wear it had and he said it looked pretty bad. So, we decided that we would take the van in to get that problem fixed. Then as we were driving the break pedal kept sticking every time Alex pressed down on the breaks. If it's not one thing then it's another, right? We seriously do not want to pour money into this van if more stuff is going to keep on going wrong. Alex said to me. "Anna, before we take this to another mechanic we have to decide how much we are willing to spend and if it is going to cost more than we want to spend, then we might just have to sell the van and take a trip to Australia or Europe." I just sat there silent for a while. I'm not ready for our across country trip to be over, I still have so much more I want to see in The U.S., and I don't want to have to change our blog name. I suggested that if the cost of the repairs are too much, then should we take the train all over America, then we could still see most of the places we want to see in the U.S., but before we start spitting out all these alternative traveling ideas we need to pray and let God guide us. Alex was pretty excited about the train idea. We prayed for a while asking God to guide us in the right direction and to fix our bus and I just felt like God was going to take care of us. I felt okay with whatever direction he was going to lead us.

We decided on a money amount that we did not want to exceed on repairing our van and today we took our van to a mechanic for an estimate. Praise God it wasn't anything crazy! The suspensions were fine, we just needed to re-align the wheels and the brake problem only needed some WD-40. Wow! That was pretty amazing! The cost of that repair was only a tenth of what we were willing to spend. So, we are back on track with our travel plans and tomorrow we head east.

Back to So Cal

Alex and I made it to San Diego okay, but it was quite the adventure. We hopped on a train in Sacramento on Jan 2^nd at 6:30am and arrived in Bakersfield on time for our bus transfer to LA and from LA we were going to catch a train Oceanside. Well, we left Bakersfield at around noon and we got about 15miles away from the grapevine on I-5 and Alex and I noticed that the wind was blowing like crazy. There was a little rain and it was coming down sideways. Alex and I saw a bird trying to fly in the distance, but it was just staying in one spot in the air and being pushed backwards at times. It was actually pretty funny to watch the bird try to fly. I didn’t have internet reception on my phone to check the weather, so I texted my sister to check the weather to see how fast the wind was blowing. The traffic on I-5 was bumper to bumper and people were driving their cars on the side lanes to try to get ahead of the traffic; I hate it when cars do that. My sister texted to me that the weather said the winds were only 14mph, but it looked way faster than 14mph. Later I found out that the winds were actually 50-60mph with gusts of 90mph. So, crazy. If we had of been driving the VW van then we probably would have tipped over.  The rain eventually turned into snow and it was so bad that it looked like we were in a blizzard. I didn’t even know the weather got that bad in that area, but supposedly it’s not the first time that area has experienced that type of weather. I-5 was eventually closed down and we were forced to go back the other way. The bus driver took us back to Bakersfield and then we were rerouted through the Tehachapi Mountains which is in the direction of the Mojave Desert. Traffic wasn’t any better taking the alternative route. As we were driving through the mountains it began to snow and it really came down. 

Tehachapi Mountains

The roads got really icy and at one point the bus wheels began to slip. I thought we might have to turn back, but we made it through. It took a total of 8 hrs to get from Bakersfield to LA. I was so hungry and we had just enough time to grab a sandwich before getting on our train in LA to Oceanside. Our total travel time from Sacramento to Oceanside was 14hrs. I was so exhausted. Our friend Peggy Marinello picked us up from the train station and drove us to her house where our van was parked. It was so nice to see our bus again. 

We stayed with Peggy for two nights and it rained the entire time we were there. I came to the conclusion that the rain was following us. It rained the entire week before we got back to Sacramento, it rained almost the entire time we were in Sacramento, and then it was still raining when we arrived back in Southern California. So, I think it really was following us. While we were at Peggy’s we visited some more friends that I met at the family camp CFO; the Odash’s. We stopped by their house and it was Dan Odash’s birthday. His whole family was there including his parents. Dan's parents have been married for 58 years and while we were there Dan turns to his dad and says, “In all the years you’ve been married, what is the worst argument you two have had?” Dan’s father says, “We were playing cards and she laid down her hand and then I laid down my hand that trumped her hand. She then said to me, ‘you horses ass.’” Everyone in the room breaks into laughter. Dan’s mom then says with a very serious look on her face, “I was really upset at him when he did that.” They were such a cute old couple. If that is the worst argument they have had all the years they been married, then they have had a good marriage.  

Ocean Cave in La Jolla

Alex and I left the Marinello’s this afternoon and are in La Jolla now. The sun has finally come out and it was actually warm enough today to wear sandals. Our plan is to stay in the San Diego area for a few days and then head east into Arizona. I’m going to try to blog about every two to three days so that my blogs don’t get too long and so that I don’t try to cram a bunch of info in one blog.

La Jolla

Sandal Weather, finally!

meditating

Yay for sun!

We spent New Year’s in Tahoe and here are a few pics from that trip as well.

Cabin view

gotta shovel the snow to get to the door

good way to keep the drinks cold!

so much snow!

awwwww

it's snowing