pictureRoute66.com

new gallery of Route 66 color images at sandiwheaton.com

I must apologize for the lack of updates this week – I have been feverishly trying to get some new work from the trip online.   I’ve been doing work on my website, as well as organizing and attending various pre-Christmas shows and sales, so it’s been hard to stay in touch.  The activity pitch is starting to die down now, so expect to hear more from me very soon.  In the meantime, I thought I’d link to a new page on my website that lists Route 66 photos that have appeared in the blog, as well as many that I haven’t shared yet.  This just scratches the surface, of course… I can’t believe how many photos I amassed during the trip!  FYI for those of you interested in purchasing any images as Christmas gifts or otherwise, there is now a purchase page using PayPal on my site.   (Or just email me, that’s probably easier!)

Back soon!

Let’s talk about Slab City.

the East Jesus open-air living space at night - kitchen on right; Chris, Cherie & Charlie in center frame, near music room

If you’ve seen the movie or read the book “Into the Wild”, you should be familiar with Slab City.  This is one of the places Chris McCandless stayed before his ill-fated Alaskan journey.  If you are into RVing, you probably know about it, too.

Slab City is located on the site of the abandoned Camp Dunlap Naval Reservation, near the eastern edge of the Salton Sea.  If you don’t know where the Salton Sea is, it’s the largest lake in California, positioned in the middle of the Colorado Desert, about an hour SE of Palm Springs and two and a half hours NE of San Diego.  I could write an entire book about the Salton Sea, so I won’t go into that here.  Later!

Camp Dunlap consisted of approximately 30 buildings on over 630 acres of desert land between the Salton Sea and the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range.  Over 185,000 troops received artillery training here before the Camp closed after the war, in 1956.  In 1961, the land was returned to the state of California and the buildings were dismantled, leaving behind a landscape of empty concrete slabs.  Transients looking for a sunny place to camp started squatting on the concrete slabs, and eventually a community of vagabonds, snow birds, wanderers and anyone who wanted to be off the grid was established.   “Slab City” was born.

western edge of Slab City, seen from atop Salvation Mountain

Summer, 2008: I’d been photographing the Salton Sea for years and always wanted to explore Slab City, but as an outsider coming in to this unorthodox community of folks who are trying to get AWAY from people, I worried I might be less than welcome.  So July last year, during my artist residency in Joshua Tree, CA, I was thrilled when a local gallery owner connected me with an artist who lives in Slab City.  Charlie – or “chasterus” online, a name derived from the first three letters of his first, middle and last names – was more than willing to welcome me to “the Slabs” and give me the grand tour.

Charles Russell, aka chasterus

It was summer in the desert and the heat was unreal, even in Joshua Tree.  I knew there was no electricity in Slab City, so I made a point to turn off the AC in the car and drive with the windows down, so that I would be accustomed to the insane heat once I arrived at Charlie’s place.  Good thinking, right?  Well, when I arrived and exited the car to introduce myself, I did so with pants so soaked with sweat from sitting on that synthetic-fabric car rental seat in 120F heat, it looked like I had peed myself.  Fortunately not much ruffles Charlie’s feathers.

Actually, you can’t let much ruffle you if you want to live in the middle of the desert with no utilities, in a completely open and free community, featuring an assortment of people on the fringes of society.  For the most part, residents are pretty cool around there – but still, one needs to protect their home and keep nosy strangers away.  This explains the signs I was greeted with upon entering Charlie’s place: “PRIVATE PROPERTY: No Trespassing” and “DANGER: Armed and Bitter Libertarian Drunkards Live Here – Trespassers Will Be Used for Target Practice”.

"Cinnabar Charm" Charlie's art van

This is Charlie’s home, East Jesus – a corner of Slab City that he has artfully crafted into an amazing compound of various trailers, art cars, sculpture gardens, recycled decor, private concert space, a container car that is the heart of his home and the source of his Slab nickname “Container Charlie”, and, of course, the home of the Slab City Gun Club.  The name “East Jesus” is both a nod to nearby Salvation Mountain, and a playful reference to the expression that indicates  somewhere ungodly far away (my Google search’s first entry indicated that the expression East Jesus meant “way the f*ck out there”).  Charlie’s website calls East Jesus “an experimental, habitable, extensible artwork in progress.  Pop 1, Elev 75.”  This place is a monument to the concept of reuse.  Rusted scrap metal fragments make a lovely geometric fence.  Stacks of discarded microwaves create a wall for the music room.  Empty metal lockers become storage cabinets for the kitchen.  And so on.  (This is all open-air, by the way.  It’s the desert.)  It’s hard to describe, really.  I’ve never been anywhere like it before or since.

Chris, Sean, Charlie and Cherie get acquainted

This being the desert, water is naturally a big issue.  Charlie gets his 100-gallon water tanks filled from a water delivery truck.  For power, there’s always solar, and generators.  And thanks to the geothermal activity in the area, there are even hot springs nearby to bathe in.  Charlie has everything he needs, and he pays virtually no rent or taxes.  This life certainly comes with its inconveniences (dust storms, unbearable summer heat, explosions in the nearby gunnery range, rotating neighbors who may have undesirable or intrusive lifestyles, scorpions and the like…) – but overall it’s pretty freakin’ sweet.

On this trip, since Charlie had been so gracious on my last visit, and since I knew Cherie and Chris (Technomadia) and their pal Sean would totally groove to Slab City and East Jesus in particular, I figured a reunion was in order.  Charlie was indeed around when we came through the Salton Sea area, and he was absolutely up for a visit.  As I suspected, they all had much in common and lots to talk about, so I got to just sit back and bask in the warm satisfaction of introducing such fascinating like-minded folk to one another.

Transit Antenna's home Walter, buried at East Jesus

I think this is a common occurrence for Charlie, though.  He said he had been through a long string of visitors at East Jesus lately.  Thanks to the guy’s amazing hospitality and the laws of natural attraction, Charlie’s home is like flypaper for random artist types.  One of the latest developments at East Jesus was the addition of a half-buried bus (Cadillac Ranch style) named Walter, the ex-mobile home of a nomadic art collective named “Transit Antenna”.  They wanted East Jesus to be the final resting place for their bus-turned-waste-vegetable-oil-powered-
RV home.  You can read about all that here.

At the end of our afternoon visit, Charlie invited us to camp at East Jesus.  Returning to the site of the previous night’s light painting festivities to pick up our trailers, we arrived JUST in time to catch an amazing sunset over the Salton Sea.  We all sprung from the vehicle and scattered, cameras and tripods in hand, to various vantage points along the water.  This was one of my favorite shots from that sunset:

salt-encrusted empty dock at the beautiful Salton Sea

Darkness came and we headed back to Slab City.  Chris and Cherie parked the Oliver in front of East Jesus and I parked the Aliner in the back (“close to the facilities”, recommended Charlie, since I have none), and we spent time chilling, listening to Charlie play music, cooking meals together, catching up on emails, file management, etc.  Charlie had picked up the guitar again since I met him last year, and is playing regularly.

Cherie poi dancing while Charlie plays

He’s quite good, and both nights there we were treated to an impromptu concert of songs by Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Johnny Cash and the like, while Cherie spun poi in an accompanying tranquil, gyrating dance.   It was so relaxing – just what I needed after the intense weeks on the road and financial catastrophes that occurred the week before.  Charlie: I must THANK YOU so very much for sharing your home, food, music, and overall awesomeness with us.  The world needs more independent and creative beings like you.

It was a good thing I had that short recharge time, too: after just two days of quality time near the Salton Sea, I had to be back in Canada in a week.  That’s more of a rushed drive than you might think.  Canada may be a larger country than the USA, but when you’re driving across America in just a week’s time, you realize it’s a pretty darn big country too.

Charlie's car and his desert view

Speaking of back home in Canada, there was an article published yesterday in my hometown’s paper, the Moncton Times and Transcript (I was born and raised in Moncton, New Brunswick).  Thanks to Linda Hersey and the paper for featuring me in their “15 Minutes of Fame” column.

Here’s to a staying power of much longer than 15 minutes: *cheers*.

Sandi and the triangle at the Salton Sea: light painting image, courtesy Sean Mahoney, photographer

One of the things I looked forward to upon finishing the Route 66 trip was meeting up with technomadia: Cherie Ve Ard and Chris Dunphy, a nomadic couple who have been a big inspiration for me over the past few months.  Cherie was one of the most important support people I called upon when planning my trip – yet we had never even met in person or spoke on the phone before!  Her commitment to promoting nomadic lifestyles is such that she was totally open to helping me by answering questions and offering advice via email, even though I was a stranger to her.  No more!  Our paths finally crossed in my favorite place: the desert of southern California.

We packed a lot into our few days together so I’ll probably write a few posts about that time.  I was just tickled to be able to act as their tour guide around the Salton Sea area, and we visited a couple of noteworthy places there worthy of their own posts: namely, Salvation Mountain and Slab City.

the egg and the triangle

As self-described geeks living and working on the road full-time, Chris and Cherie combine technology and nomadism to create life as art: traveling, working, living, exploring under the brand “technomadia”.  They are about living life fully on their own terms, NOW – not later, when they retire.  Their (awesome) blog has a list of common excuses people use to not travel full-time now, with helpful responses to debunk each excuse.  They live in their custom-made Oliver trailer, which is adorable, very functional and comfortable, and looks rather eggy.  The triangle and the egg finally met near Hemet, CA at the base of a paragliding field where Chris sometimes jumps off the mountain and flies around.  It was a real “match made in Hemet!”  (sorry)

Cherie & Chris on Salvation Mountain

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how immediate and easy the connection with others is when traveling.  My experiences on the road meeting folks like Mike at Two Guns, Leroy in Winslow and the Tiltons in Funks Grove (to name only a few!) simply would never have happened along the path of my normal working life.  It seems to me that the default way of living has us existing in these small bubbles, traveling the same routes and crossing the same paths with others, not really open to random connections with people outside our little spheres.  The idea that “anyone who approaches us must want something from us” keeps us isolated from each other.

I remember years ago, returning to Toronto after my post-grad Europe backpack trip, I specifically reminded myself to not fall back into the “head-down-no-eye-contact” big city survival technique.  Months of traveling and connecting with people from around the world had left me with a feeling of freedom and self-confidence that I did not want to lose back home in Canada.  Unfortunately, it seems to just seep back in… enough people ask you for money on the street, enough commuters push you around on the subways, enough gloomy winter days have you wrapped up and just wishing the darn streetcar would arrive so you can get home and warm up and unwind from a hellish work day… that lightness evaporates, you find yourself on the treadmill again, and you don’t even remember ever being off it.  That’s the headspace I am now hoping to avoid.

Sean trekking through Salton Sea muck for the shot

Meeting with Cherie and Chris, and their lovely friends Sean and Helene, was another of those just-add-instant-awesome connection experiences.  The first night we camped near the soaring field and stayed up late talking, laughing, telling stories, etc.  The question sounded funny to me: “whose house shall we go to?”  Of course they refer to the trailers as houses: theirs is their full-time home.  We chose mine, and I was thrilled to play host in the triangle for the first time.  The five of us fit fairly comfortably, and everyone commented on how surprisingly roomy the Aliner is inside.

The following evening we drove to the Salton Sea and camped next to the water near Niland.  It was a great spot, isolated enough for fire dancing and dark enough for light painting photography.  Cherie is a fire dancer and has all the gear to put on a great show for us photography lovers.  Their friend Sean Mahoney is a talented photographer who is well-versed in light painting techniques (in part thanks to our mutual friend and Photoshop genius Ben Willmore, who sadly couldn’t join us due to other commitments).

Cherie fire dancing

My ipod provided the wiggly music for Cherie as she danced with a few different types of “poi”, including fire and LED poi balls that she swirled around, creating great light patterns in the dark night.  Sean, Chris and I experimented with various long exposure techniques as Cherie’s gliding props painted colorful streaks across our viewfinders.

Cherie spinning poi while walking

Eventually the moon rose over the mountains to the east and we started on the more labor-intensive project of painting the triangle with light for one of Sean’s multiple-exposure light painting shots.  Cherie took care of the shutter release, Sean did his own dance with light all around (and in) the trailer and Jeep using a variety of light sources, and I sat back and watched with awe.  Later Sean would assemble the many exposures into the one image you see at the top of this post.  (I frigging LOVE it.  Thank you, Sean!!)

After probably a couple of hours, we lost Cherie and Chris to bed, and Sean and I headed down to the beach where I tried to light paint the empty shack using gel-covered blasts from a handheld flash unit “a la Troy Paiva”, whose Lost America website and book introduced me to

Cherie LED poi spinning

this whole colorful light-painting concept years ago.  I always wanted to try this technique at some of the Salton Sea abandoned buildings but never had, partly because it’s creepy out there alone at night, and partly because I never was able to stay close to the location overnight before (thank you, triangular mobile home!).

After all of this experimental night photography, we didn’t get to bed until after 4am.  I didn’t sleep very soundly or for very long, so I was feeling pretty sleep deprived the next day… but I was so very happy.  I was in one of my all-time favorite places, sharing it with these wonderful new friends, and after six weeks of intense driving-camping-blogging-shooting along Route 66, I was finally taking some time to do exactly what I love most: hanging out on the Salton Sea and taking pictures.  That afternoon, we visited Salvation Mountain and ended up camped out at East Jesus in Slab City, an amazing place with an amazing host that I will wrote about in a separate post.

spinning poi on the Salton Sea

I had planned to drive back to LA that night in order to be present at the Santa Monica Pier event the next morning… but the combination of my being so happy to finally stop and just BE for awhile, the great company, the amazing location, the sleep deprivation and the reality of a seven-hour return drive in LA traffic convinced me I should just stay put.  I was really bummed to miss out on the big Route 66 event, but I needed this recharge time.  It soon turned out that I had to head home faster than I hoped, so it was probably a good thing that I stayed out there to enjoy the short time I had.  It was hard to leave!  But leave I must…

posing at the sign at the corner of Ocean and Santa Monica (this is NOT the official end of Route 66, nor is it the sign I am writing about)

On Wednesday there was a big Route 66 event on Santa Monica Pier.  I had every intention of being there but in the end I didn’t make it (more on why in an upcoming post).  Fortunately, a lot of media did make it – so here are a couple of links sent to me by readers (I think there are many more if you care to do a Google search):

AOL Travel

MSNBC (video)

New York Times

In a nutshell, Route 66 ends at Santa Monica, CA.  The exact end point has changed since 1926 and there is a bit of confusion, and definitely some difference of opinions, on the subject.  Originally, Route 66 ended at Broadway and Seventh St. in downtown LA.  Later, in 1936, it was extended to the corner of Olympic and Lincoln in Santa Monica, which remained its official end until last week.  This is a nondescript corner a few blocks from Santa Monica Pier, which makes for a very anticlimactic ending after 2400+ miles on the road – especially when you know the Pacific Ocean is so close by.  After such a long journey, the pier (and the ocean it leads over) feels like a far more “complete” ending for those who travel Route 66.  So, even though it wasn’t official, most people just said that the Route ends at Santa Monica Pier.

Dan Rice, owner, 66 to Cali

On Wednesday, the 83rd anniversary of Route 66, all that changed.  The Route 66 Alliance declared the official end to Route 66 is now Santa Monica Pier, and a brand new “End of the Trail” sign was unveiled at the pier.  The sign is a replica of one that was a movie prop years ago, and was left near the pier for quite some time until it vanished.  Now that same sign will greet tourists and mark the end of Route 66, right on Santa Monica Pier.  Some purists take issue with this realignment, but I do think it will be be nice to have it end on the actual pier, since that is where most travelers end up anyway – especially now that Dan Rice and his “66 to Cali” booth are right there as well.

Jane posing next to the 66 to Cali kiosk

Dan’s kiosk on the pier is his response to discovering during his Route 66 trip that there were no American-made Route 66 T-shirts available.  He felt that an iconic American road like Route 66 needed high-quality, American-designed, American-produced T-shirts for its travelers – so he opened his kiosk on the pier.  (Actually it’s about more than just T-shirts for Dan… it’s about promoting Route 66, getting the younger generations to take interest and travel the road to bring business back to the Route, and the whole rejuvenate-the-economy-with-American-made-products thing… but currently it’s manifested with a great T-shirt and souvenir stand on the pier.)  Dan welcomes those ending the road here, and he’ll often stay late when he knows travelers are making their last push to the pier into the night.  Had I fully understood this man’s dedication to Route 66 travelers, I would have told him to stay open when I arrived at 9:30pm!

When I returned to LA after the Windsor smash-up, I met up with a lovely woman named Jane who reads my blog.  She showed me the Ballona Wetlands in LA (one of the causes Jane is passionate about – I didn’t even know they were there!  Thanks, Jane), treated me to lunch on Venice Beach, and then the two of us hit Santa Monica Pier to visit the 66 to Cali kiosk.  Not only does Dan have great T-shirts, but he’s just this amazing ball of positive energy.  When I arrived, after a warm greeting, he immediately challenged my assertion in a previous blog post that my campsite at El Malpais in New Mexico was the “best office ever”.  He gleefully threw open the door behind him and revealed his office view: the Pacific Ocean – nice!  Good point, Dan.

Jeff Gardner, producer of the documentary "Empty", in the mini car he's driven across the country

Dan is from Michigan so he knows all about the job loss thing.  Incredibly, when we got to the kiosk, yet another Canadian documenting a road trip across America in response to the current economic downturn was chatting with Dan.  Jeff Gardner is traveling the country in this tiny car with a documentary film crew in tow.  His project is called “Empty” and focuses on a return to American (and Canadian) made products to help our countries flourish again.  Jeff’s blog about the tour can be seen here.

Jeff is from Oshawa, Ontario – home of the Canadian headquarters for General Motors, a place where I also used to work.  We talked about our projects, sat in the car for photos, and Jeff started listing off the celebrities who have also been photographed in this small car.  My degrees of separation to George Clooney apparently just shrank to one!  Sweet!

Jeff drove this thing through snow, with no top!

And now, I must go shrink the degrees of separation between me and Canada.  I am hoofing it back home for an important meeting on Friday.  That’s where I’ve been the past few days, in the Jeep, driving many hours a day… so it’s time to hit the road again – only this time it’s the “Superslab” (interstate).  Looking forward to catching up with the Burners in OKC tonight!