Salton Sea State Recreation Area

Tired of elbowing your way through the crowds? Visit the Salton Sea on a 105F degree Thursday. Plenty of parking! (Note: The facility is well maintained. Almost as if, at any moment someone might use it.)

Nice beach, eh?

Oh wait, what’s that smell? Ah, the beach is covered in dead fish and heaps of dead barnacles. Maybe you’d wade into the water, but all the lovely brown algae might convince you otherwise.

Let’s move on to Bombay Beach, shall we?

Hoo boy. Not much left. I could have taken a hundred photos, but I didn’t need to feel that sad. There’s a small number of very well maintained homes, but clearly few that are still occupied appear to be just holding on. Looks like at least half of the homes / cabins / trailers there are completely abandoned and left to rot. On the other hand, there’s plenty of parking and real estate is cheap. Someone who’s into renovating classic travel trailers will make a mint there someday.

Apparently, there’s also a movie about Bombay Beach.

Let’s stop in the Ski Inn – apparently named back in the days when you could put a boat in the water:

A friendly elderly couple runs the joint. Stop in for a beverage and a BLT. The place is covered with dollar bills from visitors. Here’s someone who stopped in from Salem, Oregon:

Bombay Beach is not without a sense of humor:

Those of who grew up in the Reagan years are likely to be familiar with the novel (and phenomenon of) Douglas Coupland’s first novel, Generation X: Tales for and Accelerated Culture.  What some of you might not remember is that the events of the novel take place in and around Palm Springs, which is one of the reasons I like coming here.  I keep looking for the characters around every corner, though they’ve long moved on.  (for more on the book, the movement and the author check out this.)

…one of the locations in the novel is the Salton Sea, to keep a short story long, the sea was created when the Colorado River burst a dike and poured into the desert for almost two years, creating the largest inland body of water in California.  In the 50’s and 60’s this was a hot place for fishing and all sorts of watersports.  Then a series of disasters.  First a couple of hurricanes flooded the beach towns.  Then the inevitable evaporation caused mass die-offs of fish as the sea became to salty for them to survive.  What’s left today is a boulevard of broken dreams.  Abandoned buildings, desiccated beaches covered in barnacles and dead fish, a sad feeling of loss and a set of post-apocalyptic ruins inhabited by a small number of die-hards too stubborn or too poor to move on.

It’s splendid desolation.  Enjoy some photos:

At one time there was a real estate boom – reportedly so hot that people were buying property site-unseen. Today, not so much.

An abandoned marina. Currently the lake level is too low for anyone to get a boat in the water.

It’s not all bad, why look! The International Banana Museum!

Banana Robot

…and who doesn’t love Giant Gas Station Guy?

Shield’s Date Farm is good old-fashioned tourist fun, and the food in the café is also quite good.

You need more stuff, go shopping!

Dinner at the Tropical, a fun retro place that’s also modern and post-modern at the same time!

And Marie from the Tonga Hut says “HI”!

Somebody’s birthday…