on the road again
After a weekend of fun (“Smitten” Opening at thinkspace gallery Friday & visiting the Rose Bowl Flea market on Sunday), and some much needed sleep, we set off in the afternoon to begin filming “Mineral Collecting in Imperial County, California”. Our first two locations were in the Salton Sea Vincinity, so we picked up the rental truck, and headed on down the 10.
We travel this way quite alot, and one of the sights that we find really interesting is the wind mills outside Palm Springs. Justin has heard people say that they are no fun living near, but they are diffinately a spectacle; jutting out of the stark desert landscape.
Jusitn & I kind of see them as the dividing point between the LA Sprawl and the California Desert beyond.
We traveled on the northern rim of the Salton Sea, on route 111. This stretch is desolate with the exception of a few small farming communities and abandoned tourist towns.
One such example is the once vibrant resort town of Salton City.
One thing this area has plenty of is trains. Living in Tucson has made me pay more attention to freight trains, but there is always something really nostalgic about a train blasting down through the vast expanses of the desert.
Our first location was outside the “town” (we saw no town, only 3 or 4 dirt farms) of Bertram at the abandoned Bertram Mine. This location had a never ending amount of nice glauberite crystals, very similar to the ones collected at the Camp Verde, Arizona location. Of course, these were their natural color; translucent to white. We drove back a couple dirt roads to what looked like piles of dirt sprinkled with snow.
Some very old buckets of paint right nearby the first collecting sight.
If you look far out in the distance you can see the Salton Sea.
Then back on down the road to “Obsidian Butte”.
It just so happens that to get to “Obsidian Butte” one has to drive through a weird industrial farming area down “Servere Rd” until it ends, and then out to the butte on a road running on a ridge right through the marshy edge of the Salton Sea.
This area while beautiful, was very humid and rather stinky due to the brackish water. And don’t even get me started on the bugs. We did however see tons of water fowl.
When we finally got to “Obsidian Butte”, we found that it certainly did not disappoint. Both glassy black and “snowflake” obsidian was all over the ground.
One could easily collect a heaping five gallon bucket full in 30 minutes without a problem.
This monster boulder of glassy black obsidian is bigger than me, and these are everywhere. Flint-Knappers, eat your heart out!
As we finsihed getting the truck packed up, the sun started to set, and it was just beautiful.
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