When I'm on the road I literally live in my small pickup truck. I have a really nice ARB refrigerator that keeps all my perishables in good shape plus has room for a few bottles of iced tea to drink on those hot days. I'd be lost without it. I also have it arranged so I can move a few things into the cab and sleep in the back. Not the best accommodations but better than sleeping in the cab which I have to do sometimes. I have a nice air mattress and a good sleeping bag so I'm never cold or really uncomfortable. What I'm trying to say is my truck is my home when I'm on the road. And because I can't really afford a hotel room every night (rooms can be more than $100 in many places and sometimes much higher than that in Yellowstone or Grand Canyon) I have to stay in campgrounds if I'm in a national park and space is available or rest areas on major highways or even just find a place in a shopping center or mall lot if that's what's available. I've found SafeWay lots are very accommodating if the store is open 24/7 but some places are just not very friendly. For example, driving along rt. 1 in California it's not at all unusual to find "no camping" signs in every overlook or turnoff and "no overnight parking" is the rule almost everywhere. They try to make you very uncomfortable. I sort of understand ... they don't want homeless or drifters like me getting to cozy in those places. But for someone who is just doing his thing and taking pictures, it's really unfriendly and rude. I spent several weeks in California and almost every night I wasn't in a national park was an exercise in futility as I moved around trying to find any place to sleep.
I was really glad to be out of California when I crossed into Oregon. Always thought that state was laid back and accepting. WRONG! That state makes California look like a paradise. It was the only place where I actually got a citation from the local ... I don't even know what to call her ... constable who visited one of the rest areas every evening and took down license numbers, then returned the next morning and put a big orange tag on my window telling me I was abusing the "spirit" of the rest area by, of all things, sleeping there. It is called a rest area for a reason. One would think that they would not want me on the road at night, given how bad my vision has become and how hard it is for me to drive after dark. So I was really pissed the whole time I was in Oregon because of this one experience. Fortunately, the state police were more accommodating on the interstates and I was able to bed down for the night without hassles.
The overall impression one gets from driving around the country is people who are mobile, for whatever reason other than being a big rig driver, are really not welcome. Every state has rules about how long you can stay in a rest area every 24 hours. Cops don't usually enforce these rules very much but I've gotten shit from a cleaner on occasion because I haven't cleared out fast enough. All of this because I remember, as a kid, driving from California to St. Louis with my aunt and us just pulling over on the side of the road to get some sleep and no body gave a damn. This is another effect of the caustic culture in America now. It's really sad that we've become so intolerant.
Devil's Slide
Driving north on rt. 1 from Half Moon Bay toward San Francisco, you come to a big tunnel. Just before the tunnel is a stop light and parking lot for an area known as Devil's Slide. To the left as you enter you can see this large concrete structure perched precariously on a large rock overlooking the ocean. I'm not sure what this structure does ... it looks like maybe an old coastal defense bunker or something similar. It's abandoned so the taggers have been busy painting their "advertisements" all over it. The day I was there it was extremely windy so I had to get low to the ground just to keep from being blown over. It looked like a nice sunset was coming so I set up and waited. This is a standard process ... Photomatix and Lightroom. I'm a bit ambivalent about the image ... I think it's interesting but not something I would ever want to sell. Just a very interesting shot of an unusual structure and a nice sunset.
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| Devil's Slide - 20mm,f/20,1/13 sec,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0 |
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