Day 12 Cont. Salton Sea
Definitely the most eventful day so far. After dropping Matt off at the airport stumbled upon a hot springs haven: Desert Hot Springs, CA. We decided to stop in and see what was up. The first place we pulled into was a resort, a sketchy resort but a resort nonetheless. It had hot tubs and pools from natural hot spring water, pumped from the underground. Because it was a hotel we would have been unwelcome. Why not just act like we're staying at the hotel? Well that's what we did. For all everyone knew we belonged there as much as anyone else. We strolled right in and into the pool area and then into the locker room. We could barely stand the excitement of getting into water after over a week of not showering. Shortly after we walked in the locker room, another man, a tanned, well groomed mexican man walked in behind us and set down his towel "Smooth" he said with a snicker. That caught us off guard and I asked what he meant. "I saw the way you guys walked in. You don't belong here." We laughed and admitted the truth knowing now that he was only giving us a hard time and actually thought the whole thing was funny. We struck up conversation and shared a hot spring with him. He was a talkative guy, and we could tell he was a very intelligent one at that. He knew so many little facts and peoples names right off the top of his head. We talked for about in hour while simmering in the hot tub. He knew everything! We learned about his that his name was Freddie Diaz, currently the owner of a landscape company (go figure, right?) with a art history degree. He lived in Los Angeles and loved to get away and visit places like hot springs by himself to just rewind and reconnect with himself. He was obviously a very down to earth kind of guy and we had a lot of common with him. He told us all about local attractions and stories about the towns we were in. What really caught our interest was something he referred to as "Slab City", or "Home of the Hippies" right near Slaton Sea, CA. Apparently it used to be a thriving town, which the military took over to use as a bombing cite later on. Now that the military moved out, all that remains in a bunch of concrete foundations in the middle of the desert. Hippies found this to be an ideal place to park their campers and eventually it became known as Home of the Hippies because hundreds of people go there to camp, or even live in their campers. We were enthralled by this and decided we had to check it out. He also told us of "Salvation Mountain", which is essentially a large mound of dirt and bails of hay which have been painted over with scriptural verses, religious praises and biblical references. As lame as that may sound, it's actually quite the spectacle. It's incredible actually. We initially wanted to camp one more night in Joshua Tree but after hearing the stories about Slab City, we decided we wanted to try to camp there that night, providing we could find it. Eventually, with the help of a ranger, we found the hippie capitol of the world as I like to call it, and parked the Vibe, popped the hatchback, flipped the seats, rolled out our sleeping bags in the back and started a fire by the back of the car and cooked dinner as though we belonged there. Not going to lie. I LOVED it. Everyone was super friendly and said hello whenever given the chance. Even dogs came up to say hello, they didn't even want the food we offered, they just wanted to welcome their new neighbors! Salvation mountain was just unbelievable. I'll post a photo above. I can't really describe it, you just need to look at the photos and visit there yourself to get the full experience. It's one of a kind for sure.
Pretty legit day...
Next Stop Saguaro NP
Read more about Slab City here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City
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