Originally, I intended this blog to incorporate some pictures of cool places I've been.  One of the few places I've been able to go lately is La Sal del Rey, a salt lake in near Edinburg, Texas.  Most of the pictures on my "About Me" page are from there, including the one of Lucy to the left. 

La Sal del Rey is a lake in South Texas, about 20 miles north of Edinburg.  Salt mining has been going on there since the Native Americans, then the Spanish, and it later became an important source of salt in the Civil War, so forth and so on, hence the name, which literally means "The Salt of the King."  The lake sits on about 4 million tons of salt and is 4 times saltier than average seawater.  When the lake is low enough, you can actually walk out onto it.  I was hoping to be able to do that and get some cool pictures, but it had rained recently, so, fortunately for the area and unfortunately for me, the water levels were too high. 

The lake is located within the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, and so you're likely to see all kind of animal tracks if not animals themselves, including ocelot, javelina, deer, etc.   The lake is about a mile and a half walk in from the parking lot, and Lucy's little legs tired out pretty quickly, so she ended up taking the trip in my backpack. 

Once we reached the lake, it was an eerie feeling.  Everything was dead silent and still, and there was no one or thing as far as the eye could see, except some birds that flew overhead occasionally.  It was like being in some weird alternate universe, or a scene from a video game.  There were all kinds of tracks from all kinds of animals, both small and disturbingly large, in the soft dirt leading up to the lakeshore, but the shore itself was entirely made of salt crystals. 

After hanging out for awhile, the sun began to set, and as I did not relish walking a mile and a half in the dark in a wildlife refuge, we headed back to the car. 

About halfway back, we encountered a herd of javelina that were crossing the path.  A few of them stood their ground and stared at us in the path, the bristles on their back standing up, while the rest watched from the brush beside the trail.  I was at that point super glad that Lucy was in my backpack.   Having heard how vicious they can be, we grabbed some sticks and brought the mace out of my backpack.  Thankfully, we didn't have to use either, as they eventually scampered back into the woods.  We managed to hurriedly cross before the rest of the herd decided to use the same path.  From a distance, I got a very grainy picture of the herd crossing once we'd passed. 

I'd never seen a lake like that, so I think it's definitely worth a trip back, but I would probably make sure to go earlier in the day!