Cold rain was falling by the bucketful when we got up this morning. Noah looked out gloomily, checked over the forecast and made an executive decision: He’ll start the hike tomorrow. After talking it over, I agreed completely. The weather really sucked here today, with huge winds and blasting rain, and a delay will give time for the trail to dry out and (up in the snowy highlands) thaw out a bit.

So instead we headed east 100 miles (and down 4,000 feet and up more than 30 degrees F) to the Salton Sea, one of the most surreal places you could ever imagine. It’s a Werner Herzog movie waiting to be shot: A giant saltwater lake in the middle of the California desert, the result of one ecological catastrophe after another, surrounded by the ruins of multiple failed real estate ventures.

Best place, less toxic looking than most of the other environs, is the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge, where we took a walk through the howling wind (it was warm wind, though, unlike the rainy frigid wind in the mountains) to a little outcrop called, poetically, Rock Hill.

On the way back to our motel we stopped at a folk art desert tower surrounded by painted and sculpted rocks, just off I-8. Gotta love Southern California.

The weather was much better in the mountains as we came back through.

Tomorrow, the trail. Really.