The Hills Have Eyes: The Salton Sea and Salvation Mountain

Some time ago, we traveled to Palm Springs for a long weekend. Palm Springs is an easy vacation trip from L.A. – always warm and sunny, plenty of cool midcentury rentable houses with pools ready for lounging, and only a couple hours outside the city.

One of the days, the group split up to entertain themselves (ourselves?) during the day until the debauchery (fireside drinking and board games – we’re real party animals) began at night. Some stayed and hung out by the aforementioned pool, a few went off to the movies, and a small group of us decided to check out some of the weirder sights that the Palm Springs area had to offer.

We set off in a giant car and drove the hour or so to the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea, charmingly described in one article as “a beach made of death,” was at one time a hot destination for the crème de la crème of Southern California, a sort of Malibu in the desert with yacht clubs and big houses and private jets flying in and out. However, the salt content of the sea began to kill off the fish that lived there, and as the smell of dead fish grew and recurrent flooding damaged the resorts and homes, the place cleared out. Now, the “town” near the Salton Sea is basically The Hills Have Eyes come to life – in fact, one of the decrepit building hulls literally had that written on it (another one said “abandon hope all who enter here.” Fun.).

The sea itself is an eerily large body of water in the middle of a barren desert, surrounded by a “beach” of ground-up fish bones and littered with beautiful-ugly-haunting debris. It is…an experience. And a stark comparison to the manicured resorts of Palm Springs proper.

From the Salton Sea, we continued on to Salvation Mountain, a historic Folk Art monument created by one very determined Jesus-loving individual, Leonard Knight. Basically, the man painted a mountain, and if Dr. Seuss had really really liked God (and maybe he did, I don’t know), this would be a real-life version of that. It’s cool and weird and also a bit creepy. And crawling with tourists.

Should you take it upon yourself to one day visit these two oddities of the desert (and I think it truly depends on your personality as to whether you think it would be worth it – I was glad to have gone, but I don’t think they’d be everyone’s cups of tea), I would give you some advice: bring water and food/snacks. Pee before you go. And probably don’t go inside that “abandon all hope” building. That doesn’t seem safe.

Both attractions are free of charge.

The Salton Sea
The Sea is very large, but we stopped at Bombay Beach.

Salvation Mountain
Beal Rd
Niland, CA 92257

Eating Out (in Maine): Maine Beer Company & Red’s Eats

We took a trip! It was a multipart trip – the Boy’s brother got married, which was the impetus, and then we rented a car and drove up the coast of Maine and Eastern Canada to Prince Edward Island. It was beautiful, and I’ll be sure to post a non-food-related roundup of photos once I get my nonsense organized, but for now a teaser with a couple of our more palatable outings from the first day of the trip.

First up was Maine Beer Company, where we stopped for “The All In” – a tasting of all eight beers they had on tap. To my recollection, this included: Tiny Beautiful Something (pale ale), Lunch (IPA), Another One (IPA), Mo (pale ale), Peeper (ale), Zoe (hoppy amber), Red Wheelbarrow (hoppy red), and Mean Old Tom (Stout).

Their beers, we discovered too late, tended very strongly towards the hoppy side of things (both the Boy and I are slightly beer-wimpy about hops). We could tell they were good hoppy beers, for the most part, but still not particularly to our taste. Mean Old Tom, the stout, was our favorite, with Red Wheelbarrow coming in last (that one might have actually just not been very good). We nevertheless declared it an excellent stop!

Next up, and more to my personal taste, was Red’s Eats, maker of a famed lobster roll.

At $18 (the same cost as our eight-beer tasting), we were skeptical, but apparently we were just lucky not to have to wait an hour to try the thing (our line was mercifully short). The roll IS stuffed full of an entire lobster (two claws right on top), pretty much bare bones, and served with mayo and butter. You actually had to start eating by picking off bits of lobster to dip, since it was too big to bite. (The Boy, who is not the biggest lobster fan, had a little trouble with this.)

Once you did bite, the roll was deliciously buttery, and I appreciated the large amount of lobster. It seemed a good, pure way to start our lobster roll experiences. Was it worth $18? Eh, maybe…but you sure can’t beat the view.

And here’s the info so when you go to Maine, you can form your own opinions about hoppy beer and $18 lobster rolls:

Maine Beer Company
525 US Route 1
Freeport, ME 04032

Red’s Eats
41 Main Street
Wiscasset, ME 04578

And Up and Up We Go

I’m well aware that once I have children, everything will be a lot more complicated (no, Mom and Dad, that’s not happening anytime soon, don’t get excited and/or terrified). It will be buckets more difficult to pack up and head out for a weekend (in fact, even the adoption of Taiga and Tesla has made it more difficult – thankfully, their Grandma is an excellent cat-sitter). So, when we get to do it now, I am always excited to seize the opportunity – in this case, a birthday-gift trip from the Boy to me to Yosemite National Park.

We were greeted by such a sight on the drive into the park that we had to stop for some pictures. Yes, that’s Half Dome. No, we didn’t hike it.

It really is a devastatingly gorgeous place.

 Of course, I got all Ansel-Adams-inspired black-and-white artsy-fartsy up in this business.

I mean. Seriously. (Hi Boy!)

Just so happy to be there.

The one thing I quickly realized about Yosemite? There are a lot of rocks. Big rocks. And they’re gorgeous.

We didn’t see any bears (thank god), but we did see a few furry fiends.

We also took an epic hike up to the top of Vernal Falls. A hike that we thought was meant to be easy, but ended in approximately a jillion stone steps. Those things in that picture are not the stone steps.

 See that part that says “Top of Vernal Falls: 0.3 Miles”? Yeah. We’re pretty sure that was lying.

But we were determined.

And we made it up there (we ended up on top of those falls, looking down the valley going WHHHHHHYYYYYY?). But it was really amazing.

The Boy was less thrilled about having to hike all the way back down.

Bigger animals! None of the animals had any issue with people. Comes from living in a National Park, I guess.

And as we left on our first day, a storm swirled in…

…and the next morning the park was covered in snow.

We finished the weekend with a walk to a Sequoia Grove (a walk because the road was closed).

Thanks Boy for the trip! (And photo credit to him for some of these incredible photos. Check out his new blog here.)

Austin, TX

Last weekend, I went to Austin, Texas with this lady:

She’s my favorite lady. I tell everyone. We met in Austin because it’s halfway between L.A. and New York. Plus, we’d never been there, so why not?

First things first: food. That’s the menu from Shady Grove. Sometimes you can just tell from how the menu looks (I mean looks, not the food on it, duh) that things are going to be good. At least I can. This was one of those times.

QUESO. Queso is an excuse to eat a bowl of cheese. Sometimes with pulled pork in it. It was at this point that I decided I really, really like Austin.

I got the steak tacos at Shady Grove (by the way, do not think that this blog post is the sum total of all the food we ate. Sometimes we ate it all up before I could remember to take a picture of it. It happens.). Anyway, those steak tacos. Yum.

We did some shopping – hey look, it’s my favorite lady again! They had a lot of outdoor markets.

And vintage stores – like, the good kind, not the kind that only has 80s bowling shirts. You know what I’m talking about.

Austin has a river running through it – a surprisingly clean river. People kayak on it, or sometimes they paddle boat. In swans. Awesome.

We found this huge graffiti-wall-park situation not far from the studio we were renting (Home Away, people. It’s the way to go.). There’s that lady again. I hope she doesn’t mind being featured on my blog. I don’t think she will.

We also had some amazing garlic rolls at Rounders Pizzeria. They were just dripping with butter and fresh garlic. It’s a good thing it was a girls’ weekend, cause no one was going to be kissing us after those. I know, you’re wondering where all the barbecue is. I did have some…but I forgot to take a picture of it. Oops.

However, I totally remembered to take a picture of the Tamago Yoko I had at Snack Bar for brunch. It’s like a japanese hash with an egg on top. This is totally not my usual brunch order. Normally I am all about sweet, and this had wasabi mayo and sriracha. I felt kinda crazy. So I ordered it. My Boy would have been proud.

But I also got a buttermilk biscuit. What? It was brunch. This may have been my favorite part of Austin. The biscuits. Don’t tell anyone – or do, and make them go eat biscuits. Or make you biscuits.

And, as long as we’re talking about food (are we surprised? This is me we’re talking about…), let’s talk about Amy’s Ice Creams. Amy’s is a chain of ice cream stores that is only in Austin. The fact that they’re only in Austin basically makes me want to cry. It’s so good. We ate a pint of Mexican Vanilla with Cookie Dough and Heath Bar. And then I got Sweet Cream with Whoppers and Heath Bar. And then I almost got some in the airport. Oh, Amy’s. I miss you.

We spent some of our last full day hanging out by the creek in Zilker Park listening to a man play the ukulele (or the banjo, or something) while people and dogs swam and kayakers floated by. I’ll definitely go back to Austin. You should come too.