Salvation Mountain ~ Love is Everywhere

A couple of months ago Carrie and I talked about

going to Sedona for a weekend in September.

And then we changed our minds to Prescott.

And then we changed our minds to Salvation Mountain.

And added the beach.

 

When Carrie first started talking about going to Salvation Mountain I was all for it. I loved the look of the bright colors on the structure and the juxtapose feeling of the art work - a little here, a little there. The structure is a representation of artist Leonard Knight's passion: Bible scriptures and paint.

The mountain is constructed of bales of hay covered in local adobe mud, and then painted to represent the Sea of Galilee at the base, a red heart in the middle, and a cross on the top. It's funky cool and it was an adventure to get there.

This artwork is located in Niland, California, and to get there from Phoenix we headed toward Blythe and "turned left" {Carrie's words}. It's located in the lower Southern California desert, and the drive was really beautiful. At times we felt like we were driving on another planet! These sand dunes were so majestic, and it was worth the crazy road we were on - lots of up and down dips. Carrie was driving and she still got a little carsick. {You can see a short video I posted to Instagram here.}

There were date farms along the way, and orchards of fruit trees...

And there was this road:

It seemed like we were on this road for quite a while, but maybe it wasn't that bad now that I think about it. I was glad that Carrie had suggested we go "old school" and printed out directions from Google maps because we got a little turned around and somehow the paper directions worked better than our map app. {Or I'm just old school and can handle paper better than technology? Maybe.}

 

Salvation Mountain isn't really on the way to anything {that I know of} - you have to go there on purpose. It was fun to have the adventure of finding this place, and we were both pleasantly surprised when we arrived at our destination.

The photo above shows Carrie following the "yellow brick road." Said yellow brick road is in need of a bit of repair, I'm afraid. The next photo is of me at the top. See those crumbing steps on the yellow path? I sat on my rear end and scooted back down some steps, fearing they'd give way under my feet and I'd go sliding down.





 

The running theme is "God is Love" and "Love is Everywhere." There were also trucks and trailers scattered about the property that had been painted as well. A lot of hours in all this art, and I hope he did the majority of his work during the winter. Wow - it was HOT there in the middle of the desert at high noon. I may have made a comment about it being hot as h... and I was scolded by Carrie.

 

There was a section off to the side dedicated as an alter with all kinds of interesting things in there. If we had known this was there I would have totally brought a strawberry to leave! {Note to Carrie: remind me to bring strawberries on future road trips.}

 

When I look at the photos of us from that day, I remember how hot we were.

 

You can learn more about Salvation Mountain by visiting their website.

{Credit: I took some of the information for this blog post from their site.}

 

 

Really cool, right?

It was a lot of driving for us, but we really enjoyed every bit of the journey that day.

Salvation Mountain is a place you have to go to on purpose, and we thought it was worth the trek.

♥

PS: Carrie and I were the only ones there and it was really nice to just take our time and get some fun photos without other tourists in the mix. As we were preparing to leave, three other cars pulled up. Perfect timing! :o)