Motion Pictures

Recently I was telling you about my trip to the Salton Sea. I wanted to show you some pictures from it, but it proved harder than I anticipated to get the pictures out of my camera phone.

As I was saying, the trip over the inland mountains in San Diego County is a WILD ride!

You go from basically sea level up to 4200 feet (just a thousand feet shy of a MILE UP!) and then plunge SUDDENLY back down to sea level again when you hit the Imperial Valley (which is Imperial County rather than San Diego County).

The ride is beautiful.

As I made it, I wished I could take all y’all along with me (though my pickup would never hold that many) just so you could see the GORGEOUS mountain scenery.

Photos never really capture the beauty fully, and you always drive past the most interesting things before you can get a picture of them, but . . .

WAIT! WHAT AM I SAYING???

Taking pictures of passing scenery with a camera phone as you’re driving a pickup in 70-80 mph traffic on curvy mountain roads???

That’d be incredibly reckless!!!

But then . . .

That Y-chromosome I’m packin’ gives me a license to do reckless things from time to time.

So here goes . . .

NOTE: Taking these pictures is not as reckless as I just made it sound. The above description is deliberately hyperbolic. Also, you don’t hold a camera phone up to your eye, anyway (that would block your vision and would be really reckless). You just hold the phone up–without viewfinding–press the button, and get what you get.

Now here’s the pictures.

This first one was not actually taken while I was driving. Instead, it was taken from a rest stop to the east of San Diego in the Cleveland National "Forest."

Note how much green there is on the mountain.

I know, I know. It’s not much compared to what folks back east are used to–just some bushes on a hillside–but by SoCal standards, it’s a forest!

This "green" zone in San Diego County is part of the Cuyamaca (KWEE-ah-MAH-kah) Mountains.

The hills in San Diego County aren’t all this green, though. Here’s one where there is less green and more sand, as we see passing into the Laguna (Lah-GOO-nah) Mountains:

As one proceeds to the east, things start to get rockier as we go into the In-Ko-Pah (In-Ko-Pah) Mountains. . . .

And it gets rockier, with BIG rocks (that’s a semi-truck to the left, there) . . .

And then the hills lose all green and sand and are made ENTIRELY OF ROCK (ignore the bugsplatter on my windshield) . . .

The mountains also start to change color, like the stretch below, which is made of dark chocolate colored ROCKS.

By now we’re into the Jacumba (Hah-KUM-bah) Mountains, our FOURTH mountain range in ONE county! (Admittedly, it’s a county larger than some American states and some European countries.)

There are also piles of rock that are different colors (note the tiny car to the lower left). . . .

You never know what color rocks you’ll see around each turn in the road. Here’s a lighter-than-chocolate mountain (still with the tiny car). . . .

And more . . . (Remember what the color green looks like? Me neither. It’s PURE ROCK out here.)

SUDDENLY THE COLOR CHANGES TO GREY!

The color may even change more than once in a single turn of the road!

Like I said, you never can get pictures of the best images. Some of the things you see in the Jacumba Mountains are absolutely AMAZING. It’s like GOD’S ROCKPILE as you shoot out In-Ko-Pah Gorge into the Imperial Valley, less than three from the Mexican border!!!

And then we SUDDENLY drop off into the Imperial Valley!

YEE-HAW!!!

Here’s a first glimpse!

By comparison to what has gone before, the Imperial Valley (where the Salton Sea is located) is really, REALLY flat!

FUN STUFF!!!

And that’s just getting out of San Diego County!

NEXT (in this series): Into Imperial County!