This still applies to the same day, Jan. 15, 2014.
Before we got out of Niland, we caught a glimpse of the historic plaque that tells the story about Camp Dunlap, what Slab City used to be long ago. You should be able to read it if you can zoom in some:
On the way there, we toured some of the backroads and found many beautiful lakes, out in the middle of the desert, all for the wildlife. Now, some are hunting lakes where duck and bird hunters can hunt, but others are safe from hunters and the birds can go there. We saw many terns, both white and brown/black and others as we drove past.
Here's one of the lakes surrounded by cattails and other plants the birds like.
We drove up one of the roads and saw where the salt lakes had receded and dried up so they are like the Salt Flats in Bonneville near Salt Lake City in Utah, but not quite as white and vast.
We got to a place where there's two real volcanos that last spewed their innards at 0BC, yes, 2014 years ago now. That's a short enough geological time to make them still considered active. The time before that was 940BC or so. We saw a huge shiny black rock of obsidian, very much like glass from the earth's core. It was molten lava that was spewed out of the volcano cinder cone. The cinder cone has since washed away and the obsidian is scattered all about and used as road bed and water banks. It's quite heavy for the size and what looks like a good size rock is quite heavy. Wikipedia defines it as "Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock. It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth. Obsidian is hard and brittle; it therefore fractures with very sharp edges, which had been used in the past in cutting and piercing tools, and has been used experimentally as surgical scalpel blades.[4]"
You can read a lot more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian
This is the huge rock on top of the volcano:
So, we followed the road and got to a place where there's still some manageable pieces sitting around and went rock hunting.
We had to be careful since the rock is glass and just as glass can cut fingers pretty well, so can this rock. Chili Bob found a really nice large one for me that weighs several pounds. I was looking for handful sized rocks and found several nice shiny black ones. After our tour, when we got home, I washed mine and Lou's up and displayed them on the table. We also found a nice sized piece of pumice, which Kim picked up with her find.
Here's my haul all cleaned up for presentation. It's pretty fragile, so you can see a couple wee pieces broke off of one already.
We stopped and got a close up look at one of the many geothermal energy plants in the area. They take the really hot water found underground and extract the heat to make energy, then pump it back in to repeat the process all over again. It would be interesting to get a tour through one of these plants. The two pics need to be joined together. The bottom one needs to be on the right side of the top one to see how big this place is.
Next, we came to Sonny Bono Wildlife Refuge. It is an almost 3.5 square mile wildlife refuge in the Imperial Valley, just outside Calipatria. They have a website here: http://www.fws.gov/refuge/sonny_bono_salton_sea/ that you can find out many more details.
There was a large lookout area with binoculars to see snow geese on the specially planted fields of alfalfa for them. The field is sometimes so dense with snow geese, it's almost a solid white. We weren't so fortunate this time around, but definitely worth a trip back when they might be more plentiful.
They also had a place all set up for the quail. It was quail heaven, I'm sure. There was plenty of shade, low bushes, food, a fountain with a waterfall and also lots of doves and rabbits too.
They had a nice visitor centre with stuffed versions of all sorts of birds and animals that have been seen there. Even roadrunners! Beep! Beep! We saw a couple on the road going out of Slab City one day, but they were way too quick to capture by eye, let alone a camera! So, we were fortunate to see a stuffed one here that we could photograph.
This was also a well needed rest stop for some who needed to use the facilities as well as get out and stretch and walk around a bit more. They have some long walking trails around the alfalfa field where a bus load of school kids were there on a field trip that day. What an interesting place to learn about the area wildlife. This is the view from up top of the lookout platform. The trail is on the far side of this field.
It was getting on past noon about the time we were done there and the sun was hot despite Chili
Bob's jeep's air conditioning trying to keep us all cool. Around the water and lakes, it was nice and cool enough, but the sun was high and it was hot. Time to start heading back.
We didn't go directly back of course. There was still some things left to see on our tour of Slab City. We drove around for a bit and saw the Olympic sized swimming pool that the marines used to use when the place was Camp Dunlap.
The concrete structures for the tanks and changing rooms are still all there, although well worn and beat up over the years.
We saw the pet cemetery where residents have buried their four legged furry family members that have crossed over. We saw where some key people lived and along the outskirts where I thought it was Lows camped up on the hill, it's actually open for others to camp up there. It would make a good alternative site if we lost the one we have now. It's much neater campsites up there and more pristine and flat as there's not as much shrubbery.
We saw a couple person task force picking up and stacking garbage in piles so it's ready to be picked up and taken out. Obvious signs that a cleanup is in the works, which I'm sure will be a welcome change to the residents living here year round.
We saw some people out doing things or hanging out drinking some sort of liquid beverage trying to keep cool in the noonday sun. There wasn't much opportunity to take pictures and some things were on the wrong side of the vehicle for me, but it was a very good tour and soon we were back in our compound for some lunch and relaxation.
I think the tour must have wiped everyone out as everyone was hot, no one felt like doing anything real but sleeping. A trip to Brawley has been in the works for a couple of days, but been put off because of the heat. For some reason, it's been kicking our butts these last few days. Not sure why. We've been here for almost three weeks, but in various degrees of sickness (that cold that we're almost all got through now), so why now? No one knows, so it was a lazy afternoon while people rested, slept and tried to just keep cool and out of the sun. I put out the awning again after putting it in the night before when the wind got up again and set up some shade.
Later on, we started preparing dinner. I'll leave that for another post as this will conclude the Grand Tour.
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