This is the 2nd time I’ve visited the Salton Sea area, but during the first visit I didn’t have a car so I could not easily tour. This time with the car, I decided to just circumnavigate the sea and have a look. On the side I am staying on, the west side, there’s not much of the sea to see. I’d already visited the small housing developments of Desert Shores and Salton Sea Beach along the seashore that exist nearby where I was staying and they are certainly showing their ages. Even at those places there were scant opportunities to actually get anywhere near the sea. There’s really not a lot of access to it. No obvious public beaches or boat ramps that I could find. I did find some man made canals running a hundred yards from the sea inland, but their purpose escaped me. No fishing boats in them. They didn’t smell all that pleasant either. I did see some governmental environmental research buildings on one of those canals but they seemed long abandoned.
Here’s a history of the Salton Sea that helps understand it’s recent history. Worth the read. It’s the result of a human engineering accident back in 1905 which went on for two years and was considered a catastrophe back when it happened.
This is a Public Domain photo I found on Wikipedia that shows how nice the sea can be at times.
Anyway, I drove north 7 miles from the RV park, then crossed over to the east side of the sea, then continued down the east side for 35 odd miles, then back up the west side back to home base. Stopping occasionally along the way. So a 2-3 hour adventure.
