Yes, we are still in San Diego. We have been very busy working with designing new websites.  

This weekend the temperature rose from day to day, reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (which is close to 40 degree Celsius) today. So we spent Saturday and Sunday at the beach, working on our suntan and today we were mostly hiding in the air-conditioned room.

The beautiful weather lured us out again today….

... downtown is calling us - Seaport Village and the USS Midway which are both part of the Embarcadero.
The scenery is fascinating: besides the colorful stores of Seaport Village, the big Hotels, the skyscrapers of downtown and the nice yachts we also see some fisher boats and the USS Midway!

The Embarcadero in San Diego, California, USA runs along the San Diego harbor on the east side of San Diego Bay. It is home to the USS Midway on Navy Pier, the San Diego cruise terminal on B Street Pier, the Star of India (ship) at the Maritime Museum, and various restaurants and shops from the North Embarcadero down through Seaport Village.

Seaport Village was built on landfill over Punta de los Muertos, where the Spanish expedition of 1782 buried those who had died of scurvy. In later years it was a railroad yard where goods and other products were unloaded from ships and loaded aboard trains for shipment east. Today Seaport Village is a shopping and dining complex overlooking the bay in San Diego. It houses more than 70 shops, galleries, and eateries on 90,000 square feet (8,000 m²) of waterfront property. The Village contains several freestanding buildings in an assortment of architectural styles, from Victorian to traditional Mexican.

USS Midway (CVB/CVA/CV-41) was an aircraft carrier of the United States Navy, the lead ship of her class, and the first to be commissioned after the end of World War II. Active in the Vietnam War and in Operation Desert Storm, as of 2008 she is a museum ship in San Diego. She is the only remaining US aircraft carrier of the World War II era that is not an Essex class aircraft carrier.

What can I say - another gorgeous day at the beach! The tide was very low, which laid some rocks free that usually are under water.

We wake up at 6:00 am and since it is a beautiful morning with a perfectly clear sky, we decide to stay up, get dressed and leave for another trip to the desert….

Our goal is the Salton Sea, which is way out in the Californian desert. On the way to the sea we do some off-roading again and drive along some washes and sand roads. We are not the only ones; we find a lot of campers with their ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles) and bikes.

Then after about 140 miles we finally arrive a the Salton Sea: The Salton Sea, located in the southeastern corner of California, is actually a lake which occupies a desert basin known as the Salton Sink. This body of water covers a surface area of 376 square miles, making it larger than Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake.  In fact, the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California.  The Sea’s current elevation is about 227 feet below mean sea level, its maximum depth reaches 51 feet.

The Salton Sea has a unique make-up.  By virtue of its location in the Colorado Desert ecosystem, an area with average annual precipitation of less than 3 inches per year, the Sea receives minimal inflow from rain.   

As an agricultural drainage reservoir, the Salton Sea serves an important purpose for the productive agricultural valleys that adjoin it. As an agricultural sump, the Sea consists primarily of commercial agricultural drainage.  In fact, 90 percent of the entire inflow to the Sea is agricultural runoff from the Imperial, Coachella, and Mexicali Valleys. 

This inflow carries nutrients, such as phosphates and nitrates, which support the rich and abundant life in the Sea.  The inflow also carries an abundance of salt (and, thus, the Sea’s name). Currently, the salinity level of the Salton Sea is 44 parts per thousand (ppt), compared to 280 ppt for Utah’s Great Salt Lake, about 210 ppt for Israel’s Dead Sea, 87 ppt for Mono Lake and 35 ppt for the Pacific Ocean.

We discover lake after lake…

...Lake Jennings is another drinking water reservoir east of San Diego. We actually passed it this week on our way to El Capitan Reservoir. It is a lot smaller tough but the water is very clear as well.