Salton Sea, Illustrated Map

... coming soon.
I'm going to make a map, an illustrated map. My great friend and studio buddy Tim has suggested for ages that i should tackle a map... and finally it clicked... i had a reason... the Salton Sea, California! Now i won't get into all the technical stuff, how it was created back in1905, or even how it became "The French Riviera of California", you can read all that here. What i can tell you is it's a magical place. Not your conventional magical place, I'll grant you, but when we took a detour on our way from Vegas to LA back in 2005 we were hooked. It now has a special place in our hearts.

These were taken around Bombay Beach. Lots of trailers and buildings that got flooded and then left to decay. Below is the very special Salvation Mountain. I love this place, all the work of one highly motivated man, Leonard Knight. It so happens that Leonard's motivation is God, but he doesn't push that on you, it's just his thing. I like that. It's an amazing thing, built on a natural embankment and using straw bales and lots of adobe.... oh, and a LOT of old household paint. We even got to freshen up some of the paintwork. We spent a couple of hours in the midday heat painting the waterfall at the side of the 'yellow brick road'. We also had a jar of crushed glass, or 'sparkles' to Leonard, to sprinkle onto the fresh paint.

See that canteen of water in the group photo.. well, it wasn't very refreshing! A couple of hours out in this heat will do that. the bottom photo of me is about as close as i've come to kneeling before God! Everyone should see this work of art and what one man can do when he puts his mind to it. There were so many more things i could go on about ( a great bar called the Ski Inn, for one... maybe Jakki will write a piece on it all) but i'll just leave you with the pics and a little video i found. If you like it, then hopefully you can go and find out all about it yourselves.... or better still, go and visit. You won't be disappointed.