Somewhere deep in a box at my mom’s house is a photo of me, aged five, holding a stick near a warm California sea. Attached to the end of that stick is some fishing line and then and at the end of the line, a fish. A big, stinky, dead fish. I thought it would be cool to make it look like I caught the fish—which of course I hadn’t. The fish was dead when I found it, one of the many dead fish that washed up on the shore of the Salton Sea every day.

I spent a lot of time at Salton Sea as a kid. My grandfather lived there with his wife and their tailless dog. They grew grapefruits the size of infants heads and canned their own okra. The fact that anything grew there was amazing—the landscape was dry and dusty and the perfect terrain to lose the little plastic guns that came with my G.I. Joe toys.

But mostly, being there was about being near the sea. The water was as warm as bath water and over salinated and instead of sand, there were little bits of bone and decayed matter the size of lentils that lined the sea floor. I waded in, but don’t think I ever let my head sink below the water.

I’ve mostly forgotten about the place, but after seeing a bit of the new documentary Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea I’m starting to remember a whole lot more. Here’s the trailer.

Weekend America’s Ben Adair did a great story about the Salton Sea back in his Savvy Traveler days that fleshes out just how weird the place really is. Weird, but completely special.