It's a pretty unique/interesting watch.
You should have added slab city to the itinerary.
I drove around the Salton Sea, but didn’t know the history. Every little “town” around it was dead (although there were signs of restoration in progress). It’s an amazing American post-apocalypse experience, mad max in America style.
> In the 1950s and into the 1960s, the communities expanded as the area's reputation as a resort destination and sport fishery grew.[18] Hotels and yacht clubs were built on the shore along with homes and schools.[19] Resorts in communities like Bombay Beach hosted entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and Bing Crosby.[20] Yacht clubs held parties at night and golf courses provided recreation.[19] Many people came for boating activities such as water skiing and fishing as stocked fish proliferated.[21] Lakeshore communities grew as vacation homes were built.[15] More than 1.5 million visitors visited annually at the peak.[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#Agriculture,_touris...
The future could be calculated from a salinity chart and still people bought and sold expensive homes.
The place has managed to avoid accumulating the truly destructive squatter elements (e.g people with severe mental illness or substance abuse problems,though meth is a problem) because it is remote, there are no services, and it is dangerously hot during the summer time. Thus, it's pretty hard to live there without at least a modest RV and some planning, which has made it a bit more inviting and interesting than the usual homeless encampment.
Like Ludendorff holidaying covertly to the fortifications at Liège in Belgium prior to World War 1.
Kids sour faced in the back seats wishing you worked at Disney.
I wouldn't recommend it. The route we took was through a residential area. The neighbors did not seem like they wanted us to be there. We went to the water's edge, smelled the "objectionable," "noxious," "unique," and "pervasive" odor (as described by the US Geological Survey), looked at the shitty beach, and left. There's not much to do.
There's a neighborhood by me which has earned a similar reputation and the residents have been known to tell slum tourists to leave.
Its gross. Don't do that.
The key of course, is to travel with respect. Bombay Beach is probably not a place for casual selfies and party times.
There is still beauty there, for people who can look past the unpleasant. A state visitor center with the whole wild history of the place. Beaches made out of pulverized tilapia bone and shell. Fields of obsidian. The zonked-out but earnest spirituality of Salvation Mountain. Date shakes from Westmorland. Endless sun.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050722/
tl;dr "An earthquake in the Salton Sea unleashes a horde of prehistoric mollusk monsters. Discovering the creatures, a Naval officer and several scientists attempt to stop the monsters, but they escape into the canal system of the California's Imperial Valley and terrorize the populace"
“The tilapia raised on Mars were taken from the Salton Sea population…”
There are fish that can survive various levels of salt and other conditions. But if the conditions were right for them to survive, reproduce, etc, then why suddenly die? It seems like there could be a cycle since other said they experienced the same die off, but then what is the cause of the cycle and how do any survive to create the carcasses for the next die-off?
https://speciesfishing.com/fishing-the-salton-sea/
There are periodic mass die offs. The most common is because of botulism.
Avian botulism, caused by bacteria, usually occurs in the spring time when the winds are very strong and push all of the old, deoxygenated water from the bottom of the Salton Sea to the top, depleting the oxygen available for the fish, causing them to die. As the fish die, the birds eat them, and get sick from contracting the bacteria. The birds then die and get feasted on by maggots which then infect birds feasting on the maggots. This can result in massive bird mortality. The species most affected by avian botulism are waterfowl and shorebirds.
Collapse is not instantaneous. Nor is it all-encompassing. Even left unchecked for another 100 years, you would still find some forms of life present, but not the ones you see today.
In Tecopa (sorta) - right next to Death Valley.
John Waters narrating.
I took my family there in a trip we also saw Las Vegas, the Mt Palomar telescope, LA tar pits, and Palm Springs. It is too disgusting to be educational. At least when we went it stank to high heaven and we ended up with rotting fish flesh all over our pants. The dumb dog liked it. Everyone else uses it as a cautionary tale about letting me chose destinations for vacation. Getting 10x existing Lithium production would be great use of it.
There are some extremely good date palm farms north of it. It you like figs and dates, check them out.