Sal Del Rey

Hello, everyone.

We woke up this morning with a yen to visit the historic salt lake at Sal Del Rey, This salt lake goes back for centuries. The Indians used to gather salt here, and it was traded up and down the countryside. The Spanish were also impressed with it--thus it became part of the Crown's lands in the area. These days it is a National Wildlife Refuge operated by the federal government.

It is about an hour's drive out of town for us--an hour, that is, from picking up our breakfast Q tacos at the local drive-through. We got to the highway entrance about 8 a.m., parked in the fenced parking lot, and started walking along the trail.

A butterfly on a thistle blossom

A couple of ants milking an aphid on a paloverde

Some of the many, many animal tracks around the lake

Starting to walk along the lake shore.

The crystals were plentiful.

We photographed some birds and a rabbit, a bunch of shots of the crystals, and some plants. Then we left and drove along Brushline Road at the edge of the refuge. There was almost no other traffic.
We saw was a flock of wild turkeys cross the road in front of us, a bright-red bird (summer tanager?) perched on the wire overhead, and a very large cat (bobcat?) was crossing the road a little farther on. An embarrassment of riches, and by the time we got the cameras out and ready to click, the turkeys had slipped away, the cat was long gone, and the little red bird decided to fly away. That's nature for you. But we did have a very pleasant walk.