Vacation - part 1

Since we missed out on taking the girls somewhere this summer and we needed a vacation really badly (however short), we decided to take a mini-vacation. This past weekend, we were invited by our neighbor to go to the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area with them and we decided to take them up on their offer. They went up the week before and the plan was to join them on their last weekend down there. We made up our mind to go at the last minute and went out to get a permit Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, however, we found out that his wife got into a serious accident on her new quad on their first full day out. She got a pretty bad break in her leg and has had two surgeries already. We almost cancelled our trip at that point as we did not want to add to any of his problems.

But in the end, we figured we would just head down anyway. We told him not to worry about us and if we met up, then great, otherwise we would see him and his wife when they made it back home.

Our first stop on our trip was the Salton Sea. Christian and I have always wanted to go there for some reason but never made it out that far.

The Salton Sea seems to be a strange mixture of beauty and repulsive land fill. I guess it had it's hey day back in the 1930's through 50's when it had some success as a resort area but has been long forgotten and neglected. With the rise in water during the 1960's and 70's, came a steady increase in the salinity level as well as the bacteria level from wastewater runoffs mainly from Mexico. So a lot of the fish in there are all dying off as well. The shore lines are littered with dead fish...so you can imagine the smell. There are the remains of an abandoned marina, rusted up boats, abandoned houses, RV's and whatever junk and trash people have dumped there or was left behind.

Even the kids were delighted and appalled at the same time with the place. After watching the water fowl and dodging dead fish along the shore line, dad showed them how to skip rocks across the water. They still had a fun time and wanted to stop by again on our way out but it didn't quite work out.