Day 271

271/365, originally uploaded by Aaron LaRue.

Today was the first day of my road trip. This is Salvation Mountain and it is absolutely insane.  

I'm going forewarn you all now, these next few posts are going to be longer ones. I'm writing as much as I can because lord knows a few months from now I won't be able to remember everything that happened. So without further ado...

Jaimie and I planned to leave IV at 9 in the morning. While we hit our mark and left on time, we both went out the night before, and we were a little slow. I realized we would be going through Pasadena, so we decided to stop by my mom's salon and say hello. We got some coffee, Jaimie got her hair done and we munched on some delicious Chinese food, and we felt like humans again. 


Then we hit the road again and kept working our way southeast, towards Niland. On our way, we were supposed to go by the Salton Sea, which I didn't even know existed until I took my history of California class last quarter. I was really surprised when we saw it, it comes out of nowhere. You are cruising through the desert and all of the sudden there is a HUGE body of water and a mountain range. The whole thing is 15 mi wide and 35 mi wide, and somehow it sneaks up on you. 





It was beautiful too. The weather was kind of crappy until we hit the sea, and then all of a sudden the sun came out and we could roll the windows down. We cranked some Fleetwood Mac, too, which topped off the whole experience. 

We kept going until we hit Niland, which was more like a street than a city. We turned down "Main Street," which seemed to be the only street other than the highway. Then we crossed some railroad tracks, and the road turned to dirt. After a minute of driving, we could see Salvation Mountain in the distance:

 





It is huge, you can see how big the cars parked in front of it are in comparison. It's almost overwhelming, and after 7 hours on the road Jaimie and I were absolutely stoked. We got closer and started to explore, and I busted out the Bolex and started shooting some footage. Almost immediately people started looking at me funny, either stupefied or impressed. I still don't think a film camera is any more odd then a giant Jesus mountain, but apparently that's just me. Leonard, the man who "built" the mountain, was curious, so we went over to show him what we were doing. He was a funny guy, and almost deaf, so talking to him was interesting. The painted parts of the mountain are pretty smooth and fairly solid, and to me it almost looked like he used concrete. I asked him, "Leonard, what's the mountain made of?" He looked me dead in the eyes and said, "Well, it's mostly mountain." It was the best answer I could have asked for. 

We spent a while there, looking at the mountain, the hut thing next to it, and all the cars and boats that were decorated. The hut is to the right of the main mountain, and it's impressive in its own right:



The whole place is surreal, I felt like I was in a Dr. Seuss book. 

From the top of the mountain we could see what looked like water tanks that had been painted, so we walked over to them. The first one was titled "Wheel of Karma", and it was filled with a bunch of creatures having sex. 




After walking around this one, we checked out the other one next to it, which had dinosaurs and atomic bombs. They were really cool, and you could tell the same artist did both of them. When we turned to walk back towards Salvation Mountain, we saw a van that had parked next to the first tower. It had some sort of Native American chanting music playing from it, and a couple of dogs and a cat. We went over to see what was up, and that's where we met Half-Pint:




It was kind of sketchy talking to her at first, we were both sizing each other up. And she had a machete strapped to her hip, which was intimidating to say the least. But she was really cool, we ended up talking to her for over a half hour. She brought us into her van to show us a portrait that the artist who had painted the towers painted of her. It was tacked onto the wall of her van, and she kind of jokingly asked us, "What am I supposed to do with a portrait of myself?" Most people would hang it above a fireplace, but in her case, I have no idea what she's supposed to do with it. After taking some footage of her, she took a picture of us, and then she invited us to come party with the rest of their shanty town that night. There was even going to be live music on a stage they had built. We knew we couldn't, but we thanked her anyway, and we said our goodbyes. 


We explored a little bit more, driving around Slab City, which is pretty much a free-for-all campground. We found the stage, and Jaimie downed a bottle of Jack:




After I took this picture, we walked back towards my car when this girl in a Chrystler Sebring (an oddly nice car for the middle of the desert) slid to a stop. Her back window rolled down, back up, and then she found the right button and rolled down her passenger window. We came up to her and started talking. She asked what we were doing, and I told her we were making a movie, and she asked, "About what?" Apparently, a giant nomad colony in middle of nowhere wasn't weird to her anymore. She also happened to have a machete on her, tucked in between her seat and the center console, but she assured us it was just a "precaution." Jaimie asked her how long she had been there and she said, "I don't really know, I don't know what day it is or what time it is. I came out here for a puppy..." then she looked in the backseat, half expecting to find one there, and continued, "I don't have a puppy, but I have beer," she pointed to her two steel reserve tallboys in her cup holders, "and some cigarettes," which she proceeded to pull out of her glove box, "so I have what I need I guess." Then a van of sketchy dudes rolled up, putting Jaimie and I between the two cars, and they started to mess with us. We're pretty sure they were being friendly, but it's still scary when someone tells you they're going to tie you up and drag you behind their 1980's astrovan. After the sketchballs left, Sebring girl, whose name was Alyssa, invited us to the night's festivities. Again, we declined, and said our goodbyes. 


After that, we hit the road again, and drove another 4 hours back to my house. Today was the most driving we had to do in a day, but the drive was surprisingly nice, especially since Jaimie can drive a stick and I got to hang out in the passenger seat for a while. The sunset was beautiful and we bumped some soul music the whole way, it was the perfect end to our day.

We took a ton of pictures, and putting them all on here would be excessive, so if you are curious you can check out the entire album on flickr!