I’ll tell you about my trip to Vasquez Rocks soon, but I realize that I need to finish telling you about the trip to the Salton Sea, so here’s some more on that. . . .
The counties in California are HUGE!
I mean, they’re larger than some STATES back east are!
San Diego County is so large that it contians FOUR mountain ranges! (As we saw in the last post in this series.)
When you hit the edge of San Diego County, you SUDDENLY plunge out of the mountains and into a huge flat, plane known as Imperial County, though.
Imperial County is one of the largest food producing centers in WORLD–with acre upon acre of capacity that hasn’t even been tapped yet! (Take THAT, over-population freakazoids!)
Imperial County needs water, though, and that water is chiefly supplied by the Colorado River. (DUM! DUM! DUM!) More about that later!
As you drive out into it, you can’t help noticing how FLAT Imperial County is compared to the mountains that are to be found in the eastern portion of San Diego County. Here’s what the flat plane looks like:
There are still many interesting desert treats that you’ll encounter. For example: lollipops that have SCORPIONS inside them!
It’s true!
On my trip out to the Salton Sea I stopped in the town of El Centro, where I found THIS at one of the local gas stations:
The sign advertises these as REAL SCORPION SUCKERS, and it AIN’T kiddin’!
The delectible (?) pops are sugary confections that have a REAL desert scorpion embedded in them!
The critters seem to have been de-tailed, so they can’t STING an unwary cusomer, but they are otherwise whole and intact.
I didn’t buy any of the scorpion suckers (all that sugar ain’t on my diet, though the protein-laden scorpion would be okay). I have little doubt, though, that they have all the cinnamony hotness that one would want in such a destert confection.
Despite its name, "El Centro" is not the center of the state, between the Pacific Ocean and the Arizona border. Instead, "El Centro" is the Spanish phrase for what English-speakers might call "Town Square."
In reality, El Centro is far closer to Arizona than it is to the Pacific (and it’s also only about 10 miles north of Mexico), so it ain’t exactly in "the center."
I turned off there to go to the Salton Sea but quickly parked in order to check my map.
There were a number of kids on a street corner near me advertising a local car wash.
One of the kids held a megaphone, and he approached my car to try to get me to come to their car wash. I shook my head and rolled up my window and, after checking the map, was about to turn back onto the road when A LOUD THUMPING came from the right hand side of the car, in the direction I was about to turn.
IT WAS A KID HOLDING A CAR WASH SIDE WHICH HE WAS BANGING ON THE SIDE OF MY TRUCK TO GET MY ATTENTION.
Now, the kid would have been okay, but it can be REALLY DANGEROUS for short kids to go banging on tall vehicles that are starting to move and turn in the direction of the kid.
So I shooed him away, then re-parked, got out, and went up to Kid Megaphone (who seemed to be the group leader) and asked who was in charge. He pointed to some adults at the actual car was site, a block away, and I went over there, got out, and explained what happened.
The adults were horrified and explained that they would take care of the matter.
Turned out they were holding a car wash to raise money in memory of a young boy who had gotten hit by a truck.
Back on the road, I got some more pictures. As noted, Imperial County has lots of farmland, but it doesn’t look quite like farms back East. F’rinstance: The farms may be lined with palm trees rather than oak or pine or elm.
I stopped for a minute to get a picture of some interesting grass textures and colors by the roadside. Unfortunately, my camera phone (all I had at the time) didn’t have the resolution to pick up the detail well. (Thus motivating me to go out and get an actual digital camera, which I’m now using.)
In the background you can see yet another mountain range, this one on the far side of the Imperial Valley.
Those are called the "Chocolate Mountains," and they are surprisingly brown, even if the camera phone doesn’t pick that up well.
NEXT (in this series): The Salton Sea Itself!
Y’think San Diego county’s big now, you should have seen it back in the 1850’s! It included contemporary Imperial County. And Riverside County. And San Bernardino County. And a nice chunk of Inyo County, to boot. It was, at nearly 40K square miles, larger than many empires!
There is amazing diversity in the landscape of this country. The idea of palm trees in farm country — or farm country in what looks a lot like a desert to somebody from the Great Lakes State — is really strange. Thanks for sharing the pictures and the vicarious trip to Salton Sea . . .
My wife’s family lives in Calexico, just 10 miles from El Centro.
My wife’s family lives in Calexico, just 10 miles from El Centro.
It is not possible to say Arizona too many times in a blog post, Jimmy. *wink,wink*
I love the pictures. It has been over a year since I was at home and the overdeveloped east coast has nothing on the desert for beauty.
Okay. . . . In this post I said “Arizona” twice. I’ll try to work it in a little more often.