Continued from Slab City
There's more inside the camper. The work of a resident, or just a scenic artist?
And not too many miles down the road, the first outlying trace of Slab City - The Last Free Place. It looks like a military guard shack; the walls are about two-foot-thick concrete, and the apertures are shaped like rifle ports. It could stop small-arms fire and grenade fragments.
Before you actually reach Slab City, you find Salvation Mountain.
Salvation Mountain is part natural hill, part piled and stacked hay bales, and part trees, posts, glass windows, sports trophies, colored stones and additional found material, all stuck together with natural adobe made from the earth of the hill, and layer upon layer of brightly-colored paint. The picture does it no justice; you can actually climb to the top on a yellow-painted footpath (the Yellow Brick Road!) for a fine view of the surrounding desert and mountains.
This is Leonard, creator and continuing architect of Salvation Mountain. He's a very pleasant guy, a gracious host, and everything you see there, he put together over a period of twenty-plus years.
Leonard decorates vehicles, too. He's got several trucks, a couple boats, and some heavy machinery I couldn't identify, but this one's my favorite...
The entrance into what you might call the 'inside' of Salvation Mountain...
Although partly open to the sky, the inner part of the mountain is a good ten to fifteen degrees cooler than the desert outside. All that layered hay and adobe makes for very effective insulation...
One of the grottoes formed into the walls of the Mountain.
-continued in 'Slab City III'
There's more inside the camper. The work of a resident, or just a scenic artist?
And not too many miles down the road, the first outlying trace of Slab City - The Last Free Place. It looks like a military guard shack; the walls are about two-foot-thick concrete, and the apertures are shaped like rifle ports. It could stop small-arms fire and grenade fragments.
Before you actually reach Slab City, you find Salvation Mountain.
Salvation Mountain is part natural hill, part piled and stacked hay bales, and part trees, posts, glass windows, sports trophies, colored stones and additional found material, all stuck together with natural adobe made from the earth of the hill, and layer upon layer of brightly-colored paint. The picture does it no justice; you can actually climb to the top on a yellow-painted footpath (the Yellow Brick Road!) for a fine view of the surrounding desert and mountains.
This is Leonard, creator and continuing architect of Salvation Mountain. He's a very pleasant guy, a gracious host, and everything you see there, he put together over a period of twenty-plus years.
Leonard decorates vehicles, too. He's got several trucks, a couple boats, and some heavy machinery I couldn't identify, but this one's my favorite...
The entrance into what you might call the 'inside' of Salvation Mountain...
Although partly open to the sky, the inner part of the mountain is a good ten to fifteen degrees cooler than the desert outside. All that layered hay and adobe makes for very effective insulation...
One of the grottoes formed into the walls of the Mountain.
-continued in 'Slab City III'
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