A Trip Around The Salton Sea - A One Day Drive

[Music] in this video we spend a day taking a drive around the Salton Sea the Salton Sea is located in Imperial County in southeastern California and is the biggest lake in the state in terms of area the Salton Sea is also a man-made lake it was created on accident in 1905 when an irrigation canal from the Colorado River overflowed in the 1950s the Salton Sea had success as a resort area but due to increasing salinity in the lake that success was short-lived we started our drive on the eastern part of the Salton Sea and our first stop was slab city where we hope to see the famous salvation mountain unfortunately when we visited there were signs up saying no parking and Salvation Mountain was closed however we did get a good view of it with our drone [Music] we then took a drive through Slab City to see the sights Slab City is home to recreational vehicle odours and squatters who live on the slabs of an old world war 2 Marine base camp dunloe by 1956 the Marine base had shut down and in 1961 the military gave the land back to the state of California now the area is home to snowbirds and people who want to just live off the grid there are very few rules in Slab City and it's been referred to as a de facto enclave of anarchy there is quite a few art installations in Slab City but due to the ongoing pandemic and our desire to social distance we decided that we would just remain in the car and view everything through a car window though it is a place that we would like to go back to and see a little bit more of in the future our next stop was the former resort town of Bombay Beach Bombay Beach is a small town with a population estimated to be about 300 though when we were there we didn't see a single resident and about half of the buildings look like they were unoccupied and in disrepair Bombay Beach also has the ski-in which has been visited by Anthony Bourdain and claims to be the lowest elevation bar in the Western Hemisphere Bombay Beach also has lots of cool art projects throughout the town such as this Bombay Beach drive-in theater I've heard that they've actually shown movies at this drive-in theater as well though I even don't imagine people were actually sitting in those cars and then right across the street from the Bombay Beach drive-in in front of this abandoned house was an advertisement for the Dead Sea Scrolls [Music] the town actually flooded several times in the past so there's a levee facing the Salton Sea though the Salton Sea doesn't quite have the volume of water in it that it once had and when you reach the top of the levee you can see that flooding is probably not gonna be a problem in the town anytime soon [Music] and here's a look back at the town from atop the levee walking out to the water you cross over the salty mud and you get your first real exposure to the lakes famous smell when I was researching going out to the Salton Sea on this trip pretty much everything I read mentioned dead fish and how bad the lake smells and this is where I first got my first whiff of the smell of the lake now I couldn't find any dead fish there's plenty of fish bones all over the place but in a lot of videos I saw there were just dead fish laying around and I didn't see any of that as far as the owner I think it could best be described as port-a-potty on a warm day while the smell of the lake wasn't Pleasant the view from the lake was actually quite beautiful especially with the mountains in the background [Music] and here are some more art installations we found around Bombay Beach and there was signs of wreckage pretty much everywhere you looked on the beach as well sometimes you couldn't tell what was used being used for art and what was just ruins that were there and over here you can see a sea monster that was made out of bricks with a hypercube behind it there's also a shipwreck in the background there as well and there was a little church set up on the on the beach as well there was a sign advertising a Saturday church service there but I don't know if that's year-round or how old the sign actually is and here's the ruins of the Bombay Beach pier which you could see is nowhere near the water these days after leaving Bombay Beach we stopped at this abandoned gas station which is used as the model for the meth lab in the video game Grand Theft Auto 5 a lot of locations around the Salton Sea were actually used as models for that game which featured an area called the Alamo scene and sandy shores at the northern edge of the Salton Sea we passed quite a few palm trees our next stop was desert shores on the western side of the Salton Sea much like Bombay Beach desert Shores was a resort area in the 1950s and much like Bombay Beach it's not much of a resort area anymore though it did seem to be in better condition than Bombay Beach the beach actually was more Beach like as well and the smell of the lake wasn't quite as bad in desert Shores there were still studying views from desert shores and I thought the western side of the lake actually may have had better views than the eastern side at least the desert shores area [Music] we also made a brief stop at the red earth casino travel center where gas was about fifty cents a gallon cheaper than it was in El Centro we then stopped in Westmoreland which claims to be the date Sheikh capital west of the Mississippi if you know what the date Sheikh capital east of the Mississippi is please let us know in the comments how does it compare to date land pretty similar actually it's got the same kind of texture where you could actually like taste the little date pieces in it but still very good Raymon also approved of his shake we then headed to the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge unfortunately since we were visiting during a pandemic the visitor center was closed however all of the trails were open the Wildlife Refuge is known for great bird-watching but we mainly saw rabbits and quails that try to avoid us at all costs the refuge also featured quite a few of these stands which I imagine are great for bird-watching now the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge was actually started in 1930 and then was renamed for Sonny Bono in 1998 Sonny Bono was a big proponent of the Salton Sea and revitalizing the area so it's fitting that the Wildlife Refuge is named after him while we were at the visitor center area we did not run into a single other person we were the only people in the area while we can hear lots and lots of birds the birds obviously didn't want to be seen by us as they mainly hid from sight and while we can hear them we definitely could not see them and here's a view from the top of the stand as you can see a second ago there were some binocular set up there as well for people to look through our last destination was another part of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge to get to this part we had to drive down a long dirt road to get to the middle of nowhere but it was definitely worth it as that I think this was my favorite place along the Salton Sea that we stopped Here I am on top of another one of those stands looking towards the Salton Sea and as you can see it is just a beautiful view it is also completely empty there was not another person around and here are the grasslands that you can see and I don't know any other place especially in Southern California that looks like this in all our trip around the Salton Sea took about six hours with the stops that we made and we definitely didn't get to do everything there's a few museums and visitor centers that we would have liked to have visited but they were closed due to the pandemic I would recommend visiting the Salton Sea it's definitely something unique in Southern California there's no other place in the area like it and it's worth going to at least once if you have any questions please ask in the comments I'll be happy to answer if you enjoyed the video please give a thumbs up consider 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Channel: Sidetrack Adventures

Views: 64,065

Rating: 4.8955226 out of 5

Keywords: Salton Sea, The Salton Sea, Bombay Beach, Slab City, Salvation Mountain, Desert Shores, Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, abandoned places, ghost towns, strange art, California travel, Imperial County, Imperial Valley, Salton Sea travel, SoCal day drives, Southern California travel, salton sea history, Alamo Sea, Salton Sea 2020, Salton Sea California, salton sea documentary

Id: 0ZRno0EH3GI

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020