Great American Road Trip-Day 1 Review


Yesterday morning at 7am we kicked off the first leg of our big road trip and it was amazing! We took it slow for the most part, stopping along the way whenever we saw something interesting off the side of the road. That is something I have never done on any long car ride--usually the main goal is to just get there as quickly as possible, but aside from our semi-planned route, we really have no obligation to be anywhere! Before I show you the photos, just a few quick stats from yesterday:

Miles Traveled: 676
Money Spent on Gas: $138.76
Locations Visited & Photographed: 3--Amboy, CA, Junkyard on side of road, Chloride, AZ

You can also check Becker's Blog to see his shots and thoughts on yesterday!

Amboy, California is (as most things we will see on this trip) dead out in the middle of nowhere. We actually did see another person there, but I have no idea what they were doing! Amboy is right off historic route 66, and was probably once a bustling little rest stop for the travelers. In any case, here is what is there now:







So we left Amboy and continued on our way to 40 when we saw a huge junkyard off the side of the road. It was so absurd--someone had plugged a radio directly into the pole where electricity comes from, so even though it looked like nobody had been there in ages, there was music playing. It gave it a very surreal quality. Here's a few shots:





From an Apple fan:



There wasn't too much else to do at the junkyard, so we left and headed towards our real destination of the day, Chloride, Arizona. Chloride is mostly a ghost town now, although there are still people that live there and maintain its weirdness. It is also heavily populated with unfriendly dogs, which we made a point to avoid! The people that live in Chloride either maintain or contribute to the relics of a better time for the town, as nothing has been torn down, it is all still there, ripe for shooting!



There are a number of odd things about Chloride. One that we ran across was this area of rock paintings, done by (according to one of the paintings), someone who was doing some soul searching and ended the search right outside Chloride! It was a good thing we had the Hummer or we never would have made it up there. It was so cool to see what that Hummer is really built for--it ate up the rugged terrain, it was awesome! A few shots of the rocks:






The town of Chloride is so photographically cool that it was worth the trip to wherever we go next in itself! Everywhere we looked there was more to shoot than we could even cover. Lots of shots coming...



My favorite shot of Chloride:



This is the local firetruck--it is from 1933:



The Dead Ass Saloon:









The bank:



The Undertaker:



The diner:







creepy indented paintings that follow you with their eyes:

















The unfriendly dogs:



Chloride graveyard (check out Becker's absolutely SICK shot of the graveyard on his blog )





Becker and our trusty truck:



It was such a fun day, I can't wait to show you what we're shooting today! By the way, the reason these images look so rockin' is that I got to play with the new TOTALLY RAD BOUTWELL ACTIONS (click that to buy them). They are killer! Boutwells, if you're reading this, we don't really have an internet connection where we're staying so I tried out Becker's, but I am buying these ASAP when we get back.

In other notes, as stated above, we don't really have internet (save for this quick trip to a starbucks to blog) and my phone is dropping calls left and right, so if you need to get a hold of me, shoot me an email--I can download them on the phone.





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Posted: Fri - January 19, 2007 at 08:03 AM          

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