Salton Sea, Someday
Via Metafilter, this fascinating Flickr set of a road trip to Salton Sea, a 60s resort destination in Southern California where holiday and watersports facilities developed around a giant salt lake but fell into abandonment and disrepair as salinity and toxicity in the lake increased. It’s got derelict buildings, cannibalistic wild dogs, a phantasmagoric man-made edifice called Salvation Mountain built by one guy in the desert with no electricity and no running water, and dinosaurs which are apparently part of some bizarre creationist fantasy agenda that dinosaurs roamed the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.
Apart from promising me weirdness and kitsch on a level surpassing even Haw Par Villa, it’s also a fairly short drive from where the Coachella music festival goes on. I MUST GO.
Right on, Michelle. I’m so glad that the smell of rotting tilapias are calling out to you! I loved it and it’s really an incredible place. Joshua Tree is almost a yawn when SoCal has the Salton Sea.
And with the late Sonny Bono as one of its staunchest fan, a great documentary ‘Plauges and Pleasures on the Salton Sea’ narrated by John Waters, the list of reasons to go, as you’d known, just goes on and on…
My favourite videogames journalist Stuart Campbell does alot of little travel logs in places like that. He recently visited Scooby Doo Island.
http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/scooby/island.htm
Oh my gosh, you are so asking to star in your own David Lynch film… LET’S GO!!!