It was another cloudless day here in California, the
high reached 22C. The night temperatures are getting down to 3-4C.
Today we took a ride around Salton Sea which is just down
the road from us. It is a saline lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault
and it’s surface is 226 feet below sea level. It is also the largest lake in
California. Wikipedia indicates it is saltier then the Pacific Ocean.
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| Boon docking on the shore. |
On the east side of the lake a few miles away there are the Chocolate Mountains and when the area gets the heavy rains in the summer the water rushes towards the sea so they have created many ditches along the road for the water to take without washing out the road. There is one about every 80 feet.
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| Ditch created from mountain run off, 5 to 10 feet deep. |
It was interesting seeing the different types of agriculture
taking place around the lake. At our location
on the west side of
the lake there are vineyards, orange, lemon and grapefruit crops, and date
trees.
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| Date trees |
Going clock wise over the north end of the lake they were mainly growing
peppers that we could see.
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| Acres and acres of peppers |
The farming as we approached the south -east side
changed to a lot of livestock hay. We passed a huge cattle feeding station
which would have covered many acres and of course being on the downward side of
the station and being on the bike we were able to enjoy the fresh air created
by the livestock.
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| Cattle feeding station |
On the south side of the lake they were harvesting lettuce carrots
and more hay.
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| Unloading carrots |
Overhead in this area we saw 4 jets doing close manoeuvres as if
they were practising for an air show. Then coming up the west side of the lake
there was nothing green - it was all desert. It was a scenic road with nice scenery
having the mountains in the back ground and the different features in the foreground.
Just outside the town of Borrego Springs in the middle of the desert we saw metal
sculptures placed there by the owner. There are 129 of them in total but we
could only see the ones closest to the highway as the road going into the
desert was too rough for the wing to navigate. These are quite large and as we
looked into the desert we could see more in the distance.
Coming home we were
back into the citrus crops and vineyards again.
Till tomorrow...
