Desert Rat Road Trip

By Alyssa and Brittany

I’m just going to come out and say it loud and proud....I LOVE the desert! I love the terrain and landscape, the quirky sites, the odd people, and the strangeness and mystery that surrounds the desert. So one President’s Day weekend, while all of our college friends spent the long weekend partying, Brittany and I drove to the desert to do some exploring. With little money to spare, we tried making this weekend as cheap as possible. Our only real expense was our hotel. There’s not a whole lot in the Niland/Salton Sea area as far as places to stay so we settled in at the Calipatria Inn for the weekend. While I was excited to see the sites, what I was most excited about was meeting some desert rats. I really wanted to get a sense of what life is like in the desert, and I think we did just that.

SALTON SEA

A common sight on the beach

This sea was created by accident and was once a thriving resort town. Lack of water flow and massive fish deaths caused this town to become almost deserted. I finally stopped gagging from the smell and was able to take in the beauty of this enormous lake with the mountains in the background.  A remnant of desert rats still reside there, and we spent a couple of hours catching up on local gossip at their watering hole, the Ski Inn. This place is a total dive, which fit our criteria perfectly. We fit right in drinking $2 Bud Lights with the “regulars” at 9AM. They also filled us in on how much the town has changed over the decades. Make sure you order the fish buttholes (basically repackaged Spaghetti-O’s); we never had the pleasure of trying these but how many people can say they’ve eaten that?

Ski Inn parking lot with the abandoned town in the background

SALVATION MOUNTAIN

Built by Leonard Knight, this painted mountain is a monument to loving God and others. You can spot Salvation Mountain from a mile away, its bright colors pop against the sandy terrain of the desert. Leonard told us how he’d been living in his van for 30 years after his car broke down there in the 80’s. He’ll give you a tour of his mountain artwork and show you the way up the yellow brick road to the top. You'll leave with wise advice and souveniers like picture puzzles and CDs.

Britt at the entrance

Alyssa with Leonard in front of Salvation Mountain

SLAB CITY

The Last Free City! Composed of snowbirds and squatters, this is a free place for people to live in their RVs, whether permanently or as passers-by. EVERYONE has a story there, and this is definitely a place to stop if you want to meet some interesting people. We checked out a local garage sale and bought some cool Native American jewelry and chatted with the locals about the Salton Sea, learned some fish facts from a pseudo-scientist and heard their stories about how they got to The Last Free City. The locals told us they have a big stage where the young runaways perform music on Friday nights.We were there on the wrong day but they told us it was so great that we had to come back sometime to watch.

Left to Right: Pseudo-scientist, Brittany, Alyssa, Creepy guy that hit on us, Derrier skin problem woman 

UNARIUS

"The future of Earth" according to Unarius followers

In a nutshell, Unarius is a society that believes Ruth Norman, aka Uriel, communicated with aliens. They’re convinced that the aliens are going to land in Hummel (still don’t know where this is) and build a giant university where the humans will learn higher truths and new-age principles from the “space brothers.” The guy working there chatted about his personal alien experiences and showed us a model of how earth will look one day. You can make up your mind about what these people believe, but they are always friendly and eager to inform every time we’ve visited (somehow we’ve already been here three times in the last few years). He also told Alyssa and I that we were polarities and have the same psychic anatomy--I think he could be on to something there!

NOTE: If you didn't notice the video at the top, watch our documentary to find out more about our adventure!