Glark

I resumed and wrapped up the Subatomic Tour yesterday after a couple days off in Los Angeles. It was a long but fantastic day. I struck out from Pasadena and my first stop was Riverside, home of a chair made especially for your fattest president, William H. Taft. Across the street was a weird collection of naive/insane art including a beer bottle chapel and lots of things made out of naked Barbie dolls. Hey, gotta make something out of all these naked dolls, right? Right?

Then I spent way too much time trying to find the Vietnam War Dog Memorial on the other side of Riverside near the March Field Museum. Never did find it and therefore is doesn’t exist.

What did exist — and was way better than a dozen piles of dead dogs —was the apple boulders in Perris. A local artist painted them in the 1970s and people in town have been touching it up since. It was so cute. On my way to the Salton Sea I also had to stop off and say hi to the dinosaurs from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure in Cabazon.

Then I hit the Salton Sea. Eep. If you’ve ever been on the Big Island of Hawaii then think of the Salton Sea as H.O.V.E. writ large. It’s an largely empty place dotted with abandoned (and half-abandoned) communities, stores and roads. There’s probably a considerable Morlock population there.

Then I hit Salvation Mountain. Leonard Knight has been out there in the middle of nowhere for 26 years painting his mountain, building his adobe structures and converting his cars and trucks into Godmobiles. I’m not sure if he’s always there but I was the only visitor at the time and he gave me a personal tour. Did you know it was in the movie Into the Wild? Now you do. It is a big drive from pretty much anywhere but if you’re in Southern California you really should make some time to see it.

Before heading back to L.A. one of Leonard’s friends pointed me down the road from Salvation Mountain to Slab City which was also in the movie. It is pretty hard to explain. It’s sorta an off-grid RV-ish free-thinking semi solar-powered neighbourhood full of trash, trash art and weirdness. Actually it is easy to explain. It’s Burning Man for people who can commit.