After driving through 17 states, and interviewing 15 people, it was time to let off some steam. And how better to do that than spend a few nights in Las Vegas and firing off 5 different types of machine gun? We also saw a comedy pet show featuring a dog that sits on a 10 foot high platform being balanced on a man’s head while catching balls being thrown to him from the man… it went on from there, it was of course a mind expanding experience.
Meet Leonard Knight. He’s the proud creator of Salvation Mountain; just outside Niland, California. A hard man to tie down as he lives in the foothills of his hand made mountain with no phone. Leonard was no-where to be seen when we arrived in the 116 degrees heat, so we poked around for a bit taking several hundred photos and tons of b-roll footage. Just as we were about to head back into Niland to find the guy, a car covered in paint and putty pulled up. Out leapt a very excited and joyous 87 year old Leonard. We spoke with him for some time about his faith and how he built his 50 foot high message from god. A truly inspiring man, and a pleasure to meet him. We picked up a few buckets of paint and putty for him em route in Yuma, which he seemed to love.
Yesterday we witnessed ‘The Thing?’ just ouside of Pheonix, we can’t tell you exactly what it is, because that would make it a something rather than a thing. We met up with a guy called Jerry Bone who runs the place wearing a white cowboy hat (which is rock solid and apparently how “decent sixty dollar” hats are supposed to be, unlike my $2.99 floppy straw version I got from a gas station) and loves to entertain people with all the curiosities and mysteries that lay behnd the ominous door in the back of the gift shop. Jerry took us on a tour past giant dead spiders, old tractors, Hitler’s car, model Indians and then finally to the chest that contains the final resting place of… dun dun DUN… The Thing? (the question mark is very important).
Today was just supposed to be a driving day, getting a few hundred miles from Utah down to Arizona, but as we pulled off the freeway just outside Phoenix we spotted a fenced off piece of scrub land full of metal animal sculptures. So we went to check it out. In the middle of all these horses, elephants, giraffes, knights and monkeys playing in iron beds was a old trailer from which emerged Arturo Castellanos Velázquez, the artist responsible for the animals. It turns out he makes all sorts of customised wrought iron stuff, from doors to staircases (and giant cowboys riding bucking broncos). He didn’t speak English but we still managed to have a kind of chat. We had a quick look around and then escaped the 110 degree heat back into the van.
Yes, it is very odd grammar that tittle, but that’s what the place is called. Here’s Eric. A dutch fella that settled in the USA when he was 8 years old. He now owns The Hole N” The Rock in Moab, Utah. The Hole is actually an entire 14 room house that Albert and Gladys Christensen blasted and dug out of a huge rock back in the 50s. Complete with a fireplace, deep fat fryer (essential) and very alarming looking taxidermy horses. Eric now runs the place with his wife and son. A really nice funny chap. At the end of the interviewed he asked us “have you ever seen a 1000 bowling balls?”. He showed us his cache of balls, and told us of his idea to sculpt them into a giant cactus. Should certainly compliment his amazing collection of sculptures and old neon signs.
Everything is going to plan, so we had a day off (which was also part of the plan). After leaving Jerry at the Wonder Tower we headed west, past Denver and through the Rockies to a place called Glenwood Springs. It’s just next door to Aspen so it’s all jolly nice. We went up to an amusement park which had a pretty sweet bobsleigh ride down the side of the mountain and spent the afternoon white water rafting. There wasn’t much white water, but it was all jolly nice (like the rest of this place), and our guide, Bobbie, happened to have some beer with her and took us to a hot spring pool on the banks of the river for a dip. All nice and relaxing, just what we needed. Now we’re off to eat, the road beacons in the morning.
This is Jerry Chubbuck and he has a tower full of wonderful things in Genoa, Colorado – so many wonderful things the tower is called the Wonder Tower. Some would call these things junk, and they may well be right, but when you see so much of this ‘junk’ in one place, and this junk includes things like a bull castration device, a two-headed calf, thousands of Indian arrow heads, a snake pit, a rooster castration device (yeah, there’s a theme there), dinosaur poo and so much more, it’s a bit more than just junk. The tower itself has a viewing platform at the top that allows you to view 6 states at once. To say standing at the top of the tower felt safe would be like saying eating in American dinners everyday for a month is actually quite healthy, and that’s why people have different diets to improve their bodies or go through a cosmetic procedure for this same purpose.
Here we are Alliance, Nebraska at the wonderful Car Henge. It’s a henge made of cars with the best advice coming from the merger announcement, simple as that. Had a steak in a nice little restaurant in Alliance. Asked the guy serving us what there is to do in Alliance; he just said “no” and shook his head. The town’s main purpose seems to be a junction for the freight trains full of coal and other stuffs. A milestone has been smashed, we’ve just leapt over the 3000 miles marker and the 3000 photos marker. The video camera is also full, so we have to back everything up and wipe the camera, a bit scary.
It’s not all sunshine over here, our late night dash through South Dakota was a tad inclement.
We needed to make up some millage so we spend a whole day speeding through South Dakota, stopping for a breather at a town called Huron – which proudly boasts as being the home to the world’s largest pheasant. As far as we know there’s no real story behind why it’s there other than shooting pheasants to death seems to be very popular in that area. There is however a legend:
Once there was a giant ring-neck pheasant whom all the hunters wanted to claim as a trophy. One day a young boy happened upon the Giant Pheasant and, because of its magnificent beauty, spared the bird’s life. In exchange, the pheasant promised to remain always at that spot, until every person in the world has seen the World’s Largest Pheasant and his [smaller] offspring.
We’ve been pulled over by the cops twice today, once for some odd rule us foreigners didn’t know about, and once because we were speeding, although we were not, it’s more likely because we had out of town plates. This really is middle America folks.
