Salvation Mountain

January 31, 2009 – 11:30pm

Hello and welcome to Salvation Mountain. This tourist attraction (yes, it is named an official tourist attraction) has been visited by thousands of visitors every year. This is in Niland, California, and I really don’t know how to describe it……let’s look at pictures and you tell me what words should describe this masterpiece that took 26 years to build from scratch…..

Meet Leonard Knight – website link is here (don’t be shy to click, all my links open to a separate new window)

Meet his masterpiece and you can tell how proud he is of it from the way he talks about it……

It was well worth the trip to see it. Salvation Mountain is about a little over an hour from Yuma, Arizona. The town of Niland is very small….population about 6….okay 8 tops. I didn’t see alot of poeple around. It’s like an old ghost town, we stopped at a little diner to look around but there really wasn’t much to look at. We moved on pretty quickly. I would talk alot more about Salvation Mountain, but it’s website more than describes it better than I ever would.

I did pick up some free postcards and a free 35 minute video on the history of Salvation Mountain. I watched the video tonight before hopping online, great video. I think you can get a free video online, but don’t quote me, check it out and see. The video is extremely good. Oh, it’s funny, when I was talking to Leonard Knight, he saw I was holding my camera, he told me that the one other thing that he loves second to God are cameras.

Leonard’s works at expanding that mountain every single day. He’s got a great personality and he shows the world that you can live great……living on nothing at all. He lives right there at Salvation Mountain with No rent, No bills, No nothing, and he loves his visitors that come to see him and his work every day. All the hundred of thousands of gallons of paint were all donated and still is, water is donated, the makers of his postcards and videos – all donated services, the trees inside his Salvation Mountain “Museum” (that’s what he called it, a museum), all dragged in from the desert, car doors were dragged in from the side of the road from his visitors, little pieces of everything is put together to make this mountain……it is simply amazing.

When we left Niland, California we went to the Sand Dunes of California. This location is 20 miles west of Yuma. I’ve been to this before and it’s one big RVers Off-Road Party. Just bring your four wheeler out here and you can have fun for hours…….

Surprisingly, the sand dunes weren’t too busy today. When we got back to Yuma this evening, we all, all five of us, had dinner at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant. We have a Texas Roadhouse restaurant back home in New Hampshire but I don’t go to it that often at all. So we enjoyed dinner and Margaritas there and then off to Paradise Casino (don’t you start….), yes, again. I’m trying not to make this a bad habit, but it looks like it’s too late to hide that fact. I didn’t win anything tonight and I spent most of the time at the blackjack table. Lost $40 dollars there and we all went home. Now it’s relaxing time and tomorrow we are sticking around the RV in front of the TV, I mean, come on, it is Super Bowl Sunday!