The Salton Sea

Unimaginably beautiful and disappearing before our eyes.

My daughter and I have often debated whether we would live by the ocean or the mountains if we won the lottery and could buy land anywhere. The Salton Sea would solve a significant number of those debates if you only looked at pictures.

I'd like to say that the most striking thing about visiting the Salton Sea was the vistas, the 400 different species of birds that use it as a stop on the "Pacific Flyway", the fact that the depths of the water hide a portion of the San Andreas Fault, or even the saltiness of the water. However, the thing that really envelops you is the smell. 

Honestly, I hadn't looked the history of the place up before choosing to visit. I like to read the placards along trails and walkways and then read all about where I just was using reference points from my memory of the location. This is one of those times where I am incredibly grateful I didn't know that I was heading for the bog of eternal stench.

The water at the edge of the shoreline. I wouldn't even trust my LifeStraw with this stuff.

Piper and I walked from the parking area at the Salt Creek beach in the Salton Sea State Recreation Area toward the water. One of the things I will 100% warn you about is that this is not like walking on any other beach I have ever experienced - wear closed-toed shoes that can get dirty. There are incredible salt formations on the sand, as well as mud cracked areas, and piles and piles of small cylindrical shells. Hiding beneath these apparently dried zones of shoreline is a gooey muck layer that appears to be a combination of washed up algae, bird feces, and malodorous combinations of decomposing sea life; it is slippery like mud and simultaneously sticky like ooblek to anything that touches it.

The best part of the visit was getting to watch Piper have the time of her life off-leash and free. Because basically no one else was there (probably having read that sometimes the odor is so fierce it can be smelled three hours away in Los Angeles), it was safe to give her a chance to stretch her legs at full speed.

Here are some of the interesting salt and sand formations from the shoreline.

Minerals have dried in tubules that look like white-dusted Cheetos.

Textbook-worthy example of mudcracks as a sedimentary feature.

Remainders of barnacles that pile up like small dunes; it feels like you're walking through a ball-pit. Barnacles were inadvertently introduced during WWII military sea plane manuever practice.

Closer to the water line, the minerals have just dried in sheets on sandy shore.

Having previously visited Cuyahoga Valley National Park, I know it is possible to save this place if local, state, and federal officials work together. An oasis in an arid part of the country that has so much geologic value and ornithological importance for multiple continents should be "worth" saving. 

For more on places that deserve to be rehabilitated and protected, keep coming back.