After having Salvation Mountain on my California bucket list for quite some time, my siblings and I woke up before sunrise and finally made the three-hour drive to visit this amazing place this past December. This gorgeous piece of artwork is the brainchild of folk artist Leonard Knight, who built this tribute to God for all to see out in the middle of the California desert. Thanks to social media, this monument brings in several visitors to the otherwise quiet and deserted city of Niland, CA.

Regardless of your beliefs, it’s hard not to admire all the thought, care and effort that Leonard Knight invested in creating Salvation Mountain. The monument includes a stairway up to the top of the mountain, caves and a painted Sea of Galilee at the bottom, making navigating through it quite an experience. It’s also interesting to see how people interact with the space, using altars to commemorate loved ones or leave a memento behind. My siblings and I spent a few hours at the site to fully appreciate all its details.

I’ll end this post by saying that these photos are all I had left from my California archives, so I’ll be breaking out my camera soon enough and bringing you more updates from Portland. Since I’ve been kind of a hermit as of lately, I’m hoping that this blog will once again serve as motivation for me to get away from my homework, work and job search and have more adventures around my new home.

That being said, it’s been a while since I have gotten personal on this blog, but lately I’ve been feeling extremely homesick for California. Portland is a fun city and I love my graduate program, but I also miss my family, the food and my favorite spots back in LA. It definitely is not helping that I’ve been re-watching Parks and Recreation, which is filmed in my hometown of Pasadena, and it makes me constantly think about home. Does anybody have any suggestions of how to deal with being homesick?

xoxo,

Helen