Adventures by Foot: Salt Crystals Abound: Day 1 & 2 on the Salton Sea

All the way from Denali to the Salton Sea, grateful for this car!
Perched overlooking the Salton Sea.

Our trusty "Giant Banana" tandem kayak & kayak sailor 6' sail.

We're having a midday sun break on our second day of paddling around the Salton Sea. We started at Obsidian Butte, a rocky protrusion into the south end of the sea. Yesterday we paddled north on our first leg of a counter-clockwise route that will take us all around the sea, hugging the shoreline as close as possible. Yesterday we were treated to a massive amount of birds, on the shore, in the water & swarming overhead when we got too close for their comfort. I've never before seen the sheer numbers of birds, such that we could hear their wing beats & watch the water ripple beneath the wind that they were creating. Seagulls, white ibis, cormorant, some kind of Guinea hen shorebird, brown & white pelicans! We came upon a number of raised duck blind shelters, which allowed us easy platforms for getting out of the kayak periodically. There's no one else out on the water, aside from the few bird hunters in their blinds. Not a single other boat.

We met a man, Popeye, who lives in Bombay Beach, who was a wealth of nautical information about the lake. He lived in his 20 foot sail boat on the lake the first half of 2014. He knows about the shoreline, where the best places to go ashore & resupply are and he fully appreciated the glory of this body of water. We camped on the dike at the end of B street in Bombay Beach. We got an earlier start this morning (7:20am) and paddled for four hours. We're moving slower today as our bodies adapt to being used in a new way. The abandoned trailer park just south of the park's 14 mile strip is providing a lovely place to rest & stay out of the sun while its at its peak intensity.