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Published: February 20th 2018
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Salvation Mountain
Salvation Mountain inside Slab City. It is made up of painted adobe and was the life's work of one of the former long-term residents. The Slabs has a Committee to ensure the mountain remains unchanged. (In the pictures zoom in on the graffiti, there are interesting messages to be read)
The day started with a very windy drive from Quartzsite to the 24 Palms Spotlight Casino, the news says gusts hit 65 MPH, but we arrived safely. Right away we noticed the lush green grass at the entrance. I told Mi Hyon, "I bet Maggie will love having her feet in grass again! It's been quite a while!" Well, once we settled into the parking lot, I took her for a walk across the sand to the grass thinking, "Oh boy is she going to love this!" Well wrong! She immediately tried to drag me back into the sand and gravel because she wanted nothing to do with that green stuff. Not to be outdone, I dragged her into the grass to show her who's the boss...in reply she simply refused to do her business until we got back to the gravel...once again one of my ladies showed me who's the boss. After getting Maggie settled, Mi Hyon and I went into the smoking-allowed casino for lunch and a little gaming. After we ate, I handed Mi Hyon a whole $5 to blow in the
penny machine, in 5 minutes she won $105.85. We decided we had enough smoke and we took our winnings back to the RV and got ready to go see a couple of points of interest.
Slab City and Bombay Beach are two more strange bucket list items we had planned for this trip. They placed high on the list, certainly not for their beauty or majesty...maybe just morbid curiosity or possibly a desire to see someplace so incredibly different from our existence. Can't really be explained, but either way we were not disappointed! The first was Bombay Beach, once a playground for the stars with beautiful beach-front resorts and yacht clubs. It all began with an accidental overflow of a canal intended to divert water from the Colorado River to millions of acres of California farmland. The multi-year accidental overflow created the largest lake in California (the Salton Sea) right in the Sonoran Desert. Soon after, fish were introduced and by the 1920s Salton Sea became a major tourist destination. However, the lake does not have an outlet or get much new water, so it became more salty than the Pacific. Mix in fertilizer runoff from adjacent farms, pesticides,
Grass!
Haven't seen green grass since, our Florida visit. and algae blooms and they ended up with major fish kills and the associated smell that comes with it. Mi Hyon can attest to that. The rest is history, Bombay Beach went from a boom town to a ghost town in just a few decades. The remaining town looks a little apocalyptic, but for reasons unknown, some people remain among the abandoned graffiti-marked hotels, resorts, and store fronts. The lake remains beautiful...if you can get past the dead fish and smell.
Our next stop was the most interesting of the trip, "Slab City" aptly named after the slabs remaining from a WWII Marine training base after the buildings were removed. It first gained notoriety for its role in the movie "Into the Wild" where a young man sets out across the country to find himself and ends up dying in the Alaskan wilderness. The movie covered his time living in "Slab City" and kicked off a cult following. The "last free place" has no normal utilities (water, sewer, power, or trash service) but has been continuously occupied by folks living outside societal norms since the 1960s. Residents are made up of artists, snowbirds down for the winter, homeless, families,
Palm Tree Farm
First time either Mi Hyon have seen a Palm Tree farm. and folks that just want to free from the chains of government. (read some of the art) It is truly a unique self-governed community highlighted by piles of garbage, beautiful and/or strange artistic structures, a library, a hostel, churches, and some very unique personal abodes. Slab City is divided roughly into 5 areas; Salvation Mountain; "residential areas"; The Range (a full stage area for Saturday night entertainment of music, poetry, readings, plays etc.); East Jesus (artistic structures); and the snow bird RV parking area. Both places are worth a look-up on the web to get more details and if you're traveling through the Sonoran Desert of California, they're a must see spectacle. The winds are supposed to die down tonight so tomorrow we're headed to Joshua Tree National Park.
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