Salton Sea

Holy cow, this body of water is huge! I don’t know what I was expecting, but not a real sea in the middle of the desert… you could not see the other side unless it was the mountains to the north. To all other sides, it appeared as if it were the Pacific ocean, with only a blue sky horizon in sight.

“The Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheic rift lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault, predominantly in California’s Imperial Valley. The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink in the Colorado Desert of Imperial and Riverside counties in Southern California. Like Death Valley, it is below sea level. Currently, its surface is 226 ft (69 m) below sea level. The deepest area of the sea is 5 ft (1.5 m) higher than the lowest point of Death Valley.” – Wikipedia

Again, I had no idea I was heading to a below-seas-level-area. It was not until I peaked at my GPS and it said -200 ft that I had any idea at all. Here I was, below sea level again with a huge sea right in front of me: A sea below the sea :-)