Anastasia Repairs, The Hitchhiker, and Slab City…

Anastasia has problems…

As I made my way south on highway 101, a crazy experience in itself, I was just north of Los Angeles in Bakersfield when I heard my brakes start to grind.  I pulled off immediately and searched for a repair shop.  Luckily I was less than two miles from a brake shop chain store called Brake Masters, so I limped my way over to the shop and had them take a look at her.  The rear disc brake pad on the right rear were down to metal and appeared to have been sticking for a while.  I needed at least one rotor, but I knew they were both getting pretty thin so after they priced the job with both rotors I gave them the okay…

The manager was super nice and because he didn’t have the rotors in stock he had to call the warehouse and have them sent out which took a couple of additional hours.  He was so apologetic for the delay and kept calling the warehouse to make sure they were going to stick to their scheduled delivery time.  He must have called them 4 or 5 times, so much that they stopped answering the phone.  But his last call got through and he laughed because he said they picked up the phone and the first words out of their mouth, even before he could speak were, ‘they’re on their way!’

I only had to spend a few hours there, they did a good job and I was safely back on the road by late afternoon.  I drove about another hour or so to a truck stop and parked for the night…

The hitchhiker…

I spent the night in a Flying J truck stop.  I like both the Flying J and the Love’s truck stops.  I feel very comfortable and welcome most of the time.  This one was a bit different for some reason.  Again I felt unwelcome by even the trucking community.  I try to park off the beaten path and not take up a valuable space reserved for truckers but this was a newly opened truck stop and there really weren’t too many spots out of the way of the truckers.  I found a spot that I thought would be difficult for a tractor trailer to maneuver into and parked.  A little later on a truck pulled up in front of me with his lights on and stayed there for quite a while.  I peeked out and he seemed upset even though there were plenty of other spaces available, he seemed miffed that this van was parked here.  I waited for a knock on the door, but he eventually backed up and left…

I woke up early the next morning, grabbed my personal hygiene items from the van and went in to get a shower.  They have very nice facilities and it always makes me feel better to have a good hot shower.  I got a cup of coffee after my shower and hit the road again…

Down the road when I stopped to use the bathroom at a gas station just off the interstate, I parked to the side and I was walking in when this young woman, 30-ish, with a large backpack and a carry bag asked me if I was heading east.  I told her I was heading to Quartzite AZ.  She asked if she could ride along and I said okay.  After relieving myself I came back out of the station to the van and helped her to load her bags and we took off.  I introduced myself and she told me her name was Bethany.  I asked her quite a few questions as we traveled like where was she headed, why was she on the road, you know, just curiosity, but for the most part she responded with short answers and no real content…

When I would speak to her, asking her questions, making conversation, she would always respond with yes sir or no sir, which I understand why, a kind of respect for elders thing, but I told her just call me by my name.  She did say that she had been across the country, ocean to ocean, five times and that she felt she had some gypsy in her blood… 

For the most part, conversations were almost non-existent, and that actually worked well for me.  She seemed to be okay with her circumstances and didn’t consider me a threat, nor did I consider her a threat, but we just didn’t have much common ground to share except the music on the radio.  At one point early on she asked me if I knew where ‘the slabs’ (aka Slab City) were.  To which I replied yes, I think they are near Palm Springs, and actually we would be traveling pretty close by.  She said she wanted to stay there, with all the hippies (lol).  I asked her if she had any notion of what Slab City was like and she responded that it’s a big hippy commune.  I held my tongue.  I asked if she had a tent, she said no, not even a blanket.  Which made me wonder how she made it this far…

I looked at the map and it was a bit out of my way to go to Slab City, but I was curious about it anyway, so I told her I would take her there and drop her off.  I knew I could use this for a good photo shoot opportunity while I was there so it I figured it would all work out.  However, when we got to Slab City she had a sudden change of heart… 

If you don’t know about Slab City, it’s an old abandoned military facility.  It gets its name from all of the concrete slabs that were left behind after the buildings were disassembled and removed.  It’s considered to be the only truly free living space in America.  It’s a place where anyone can stay for free, forever if they want.  There are no laws, there are no rules or regulations, but somehow the people have created an active community of arts, crafts, and music among other creative works.  It’s a desert community with old trailers and dilapidated RVs, where any surplus item can become a new building structure or a work of artistic creativity.  Salvation Mountain has become a Slab City icon and it’s quite a tourist attraction as you can see from the pictures.  People were streaming in to this forsaken piece of desert land to get pictures of Salvation Mountain and to walk the famed yellow brick road up the mountain to the top…

I did manage to snap a few pictures while I was there, but I’ll definitely have to revisit this place.  I think I could spend a day or two just photographing the uniqueness of this self-perpetuating community…

 

Evidently Slab City wasn’t exactly what my hitchhiking friend thought it was, she seemed to have a bit of an ‘oh shit’ moment and then she asked me if I could just drop her off near the interstate.  Well, the nearest interstate was about an hour away south and my original plans were to head back north, but since I didn’t want to backtrack, I just changed my final destination from Quartzite south to Yuma in order to get her to an interstate and still have a familiar place to rest for the night.  I knew the camping areas there and I could settle in for a day or two to rest up and then head up to Quartzite…

Not long before we got to the interstate said she really wanted to go to Yuma.  Now at this point I’m just a little concerned as to whether or not she has any idea of where she wants to go, but I asked where in Yuma she wanted to be dropped off, it’s a big city I said.  She didn’t know, maybe a shelter she said.  So I looked up the shelters in the area and found only one that was open on Saturday.  I told her that there was a mission open and I could take her there, and she happily agreed.  I made my way to Yuma while she fixed her hair, makeup and freshened up a bit.  I found the mission not far off the interstate, helped her get her bags out of the van and told her to take care.  She let me know she was very thankful for the help, and she wished me good luck as she made her way through the mission doors…

I turned around and drove back to the interstate headed for Ogilby CA, to American Girl Mine Road where I had been camping on BLM land and setup camp…

It’s now Monday February 5th.  In the morning I will head up to the library to post these new pages.  After that I will spend some of the day running my weekly errands but then I think I’m headed up to the Quartzite area to camp for a while.  A lot depends on the weather.  I may be traveling to other places I haven’t been if the weather holds, I’ll let you know where I land…