To Tucson, and Beyond! Day ten, Salton Sea and Joshua Tree

I’d never been near the Salton Sea. Saw it on travel shows, where everything looked dead and falling apart, and locals looked like folks who’d moved there, then couldn’t leave. That was not what we found. Yes, the water-oriented businesses were closed and abandoned, but there were a lot of newer well maintained houses, a lot of residents, but obviously 1/10th or less the potential population, the roads and layout were designed for way more houses. Still, it looked like a lot of other desert towns. The mountains and scenery were really spectacular. Lots of dead palm trees though.

At some point, there must have been hundreds of live trees here, but the closer you got to the water, the more dead trees you saw, and I’m guessing the former land owners just abandoned everything. There’s no one to clear them out.

After a quick visit, we headed out to go to Joshua Tree (well, the BLM just south of the park). When getting gas, the tire pressure monitors for two tires went off, saying they were losing air. We drove around town, and I stopped and checked them several times. They seemed fine, but since we were heading out of cell coverage, caused a little bit of concern at the end of the day!

There were a lot more folks camped out here than I expected. We figured out the next day, everyone camped on the left side of the road, even though there were a ton of places on the right side as well. We got a nice site, not too close to anyone else, and had a great overnight boondocking here.

Feb 21 2017