(no subject)
OK. finally, an update on my SoCal trip! Check the cut for my trip summary and some photos!
Let's see, we left Friday morning, and drove down the 101. Three artcars, me in Bruce, Emily in the Vain Van, and Joy in Flivver. We stopped at the Madonna Inn to check out the hotel
We also stopped a little south of SLO to check out some metal dinosaurs.
The place (kinda of antiques, garden decorations, rocks etc) had actually been recently flooded, but we were lucky enough to run into the owner there, who let us in, and we got to chat to him and look around
That night we camped overnight at El Capitan State Beach, a little NW of Santa Barbara, it was nice, and pretty quiet! Well, you get some freeway noise, but you also get ocean noise! There wasn't many people there.
Saturday we set off for Joshua Tree. Along the way we stopped at the Wigwam Motel out in Rialto (It think) it was very cute, the rooms looked a little nicer than the Holbrook AZ one, where we have stayed before. We met up with out ArtCar friend Scott here.
Then we went to Tio's Tacos in Riverside, which is a great restaurant, but also a fabulous folk art environment!! The owner Martin Sanchez has been working on it for over 10 years. Tons of tiling, all the tables, lots of walkways, a beer bottle chapel, topiaries, figures made out of chicken wire filled with stuff, found art sculpture and fountains everywhere! He recycles and uses everything. He's a super sweet guy too, he came out from the kitchen to see us and show us around after lunch. His english is OK but not great so his daughter came along too. He showed us the building on the lot that they are working on, he has the bottom floor done with these different areas that represent parts of his childhood and important memories. He never finished elementary school, he's only 41, and he's done so much and worked so hard! Amazing! I highly recommend a visit for those of you in the SoCal area, you'll be blown away!
After that we headed out to Joshua tree, we went to the gallery first, and the opening was fun
It was a Bisbee, AZ artcar friend of ours Kate, her opening, so her car was there, and also our artcar friends Philo and Joanne were there, they're from the bay area but were down in LA that weekend.
After that we went out to our campsite at Joshua Tree, which was a bit of a clusterfuck, as they had not correctly tagged our reserved sites, so some people were camped there, we didn't want to make them move, so we went back to the ranger station, and got some other sites, of course someone else was in one of those (which was far enough, if a site is empty, you can camp there, we were just going on a list of non-reserved sites without knowing who may be there already, and it was getting late at this point) so we kinda had to squish into two sites, altho we did have three, it worked tho. I'd never been there before, cool rocks.
The next day, Sunday, the gallery owners Bonnie and George took us on a tour of arty homes around the area.
The tile house, which is being tiled over, very neat
We also went to the Beauty bubble, this guy is a hairdresser, and has a little museum of beauty products and ads
We also saw a metal sculpture garden, there are also a lot of his sculptures around the JT and 29Palms area
We also went to George and Bonnie's house, up in the hills above JT, which was beautiful, great cactus garden. I don't have any pics from there, I was just relaxin!
That evening we went up to PioneerTown, which was a town that was started as a movie set, then it turned into a regular town when they no longer made films there.
We went and ate at Pappy and Harriets, kinda roadhouse-y, great food, great band - The Joshua Tree Thrift Store all stores, kind of an everchanging group of people that play and sing together.
Monday morning we went out to the Noah Purifoy desert sculpture environment. We lucked out here as well, as the caretakers were there, so we got to go into the quonset hut gallery, and into the house.
Then we headed down to Niland on the Salton Sea. We were going to stay at Bashfords RV park, but it was all gravel and no trees. So the others stayed at our artcar friend Charlie's encampment 'East Jesus' out at Slab City, I was going to go back up the sea 30 mins to a campground, then just wussed out and went 10 mins down to the hotel in Calipatria. The bathroom facilities at East Jesus were of the nearest bush/tree sort, which I'm not good with (squatting not easy with a bad back!)
Charlie's place is pretty cool, he's putting together a sculpture garden at his place.
Oh, when we went to Slab City, we also saw an NV art car friend there, who is currently living there. Near his area, there was a little lab/chow puppy that some crackheads had left tied up under a tree there, on a really short rope. Joy couldn't leave her there, so she is now the owner of cute little Lucky!! Gonna be a big dog tho, or I mighta considered nabbing her
The next morning, Tuesday, we checked out the Slab City library, and had a quick stop at the hot springs there, where a couple of them had a bath. On the way out of the area we stopped at Bombay Beach, which is a tiny town, where there is a marina area that had been flooded. There are some submerged cars, trailers etc, cool looking, but stinky there at the shoreline! We then headed up to Palm Springs, the original plan was to get there early enough to go to some thrift stores, but that didn't happen, so we just hopped in the spa, then went across the street to the good seafood place for dinner.
Next day, Wednesday, we hit the road for Techachapi. We stopped along the way near Helendale to see Elmer Long's bottle forest. Elmer is a very nice guy, and we hung out there for a while. He gave me some toys for my truck, and he gave Joy a mannequin, haha.
It was super windy in the area, and all the way driving out to Techachapi. We were going to stay at an RV park there, but it was way too windy for tents and even Emily's aframe popup. Joy and I were stubborn and insisted on staying on this cheaper kinda grotty motel, while Emily went to the Best Western. The bed was terrible, and there were some people that we shared the very thin inside wall who musta been on speed, cause they were up the whole fucking night till like 5am, talking loudly, ugh. So pretty crap night, oh well. The owners were super nice, and gave me toys for my truck, and Joy a great pair of boots for the legs on her car.
Got some pastries for breakky at this awesome german bakery the next morning. Everything was soooooo good, and really reasonably priced. if you ever go thru there, go and drool!
Next morning, we hit the road for home!! I managed to lose everyone a little before we got to Bakersfield, well not lose, they knew I was gonna take off, and I pretty much pushed thur to home, to my sweet sweet Chris! It was good to see him, I wish he coulda come with me.
All in all, a good trip, although plenty of frustration due to the fact that I just don't travel well with more than one other art car, oh well. We did see some really really cool things.
Here's the link to all my photos
http://pics.livejournal.com/joeychen/gallery/0001y86w
Let's see, we left Friday morning, and drove down the 101. Three artcars, me in Bruce, Emily in the Vain Van, and Joy in Flivver. We stopped at the Madonna Inn to check out the hotel
We also stopped a little south of SLO to check out some metal dinosaurs.
The place (kinda of antiques, garden decorations, rocks etc) had actually been recently flooded, but we were lucky enough to run into the owner there, who let us in, and we got to chat to him and look around
That night we camped overnight at El Capitan State Beach, a little NW of Santa Barbara, it was nice, and pretty quiet! Well, you get some freeway noise, but you also get ocean noise! There wasn't many people there.
Saturday we set off for Joshua Tree. Along the way we stopped at the Wigwam Motel out in Rialto (It think) it was very cute, the rooms looked a little nicer than the Holbrook AZ one, where we have stayed before. We met up with out ArtCar friend Scott here.
Then we went to Tio's Tacos in Riverside, which is a great restaurant, but also a fabulous folk art environment!! The owner Martin Sanchez has been working on it for over 10 years. Tons of tiling, all the tables, lots of walkways, a beer bottle chapel, topiaries, figures made out of chicken wire filled with stuff, found art sculpture and fountains everywhere! He recycles and uses everything. He's a super sweet guy too, he came out from the kitchen to see us and show us around after lunch. His english is OK but not great so his daughter came along too. He showed us the building on the lot that they are working on, he has the bottom floor done with these different areas that represent parts of his childhood and important memories. He never finished elementary school, he's only 41, and he's done so much and worked so hard! Amazing! I highly recommend a visit for those of you in the SoCal area, you'll be blown away!
After that we headed out to Joshua tree, we went to the gallery first, and the opening was fun
It was a Bisbee, AZ artcar friend of ours Kate, her opening, so her car was there, and also our artcar friends Philo and Joanne were there, they're from the bay area but were down in LA that weekend.
After that we went out to our campsite at Joshua Tree, which was a bit of a clusterfuck, as they had not correctly tagged our reserved sites, so some people were camped there, we didn't want to make them move, so we went back to the ranger station, and got some other sites, of course someone else was in one of those (which was far enough, if a site is empty, you can camp there, we were just going on a list of non-reserved sites without knowing who may be there already, and it was getting late at this point) so we kinda had to squish into two sites, altho we did have three, it worked tho. I'd never been there before, cool rocks.
The next day, Sunday, the gallery owners Bonnie and George took us on a tour of arty homes around the area.
The tile house, which is being tiled over, very neat
We also went to the Beauty bubble, this guy is a hairdresser, and has a little museum of beauty products and ads
We also saw a metal sculpture garden, there are also a lot of his sculptures around the JT and 29Palms area
We also went to George and Bonnie's house, up in the hills above JT, which was beautiful, great cactus garden. I don't have any pics from there, I was just relaxin!
That evening we went up to PioneerTown, which was a town that was started as a movie set, then it turned into a regular town when they no longer made films there.
We went and ate at Pappy and Harriets, kinda roadhouse-y, great food, great band - The Joshua Tree Thrift Store all stores, kind of an everchanging group of people that play and sing together.
Monday morning we went out to the Noah Purifoy desert sculpture environment. We lucked out here as well, as the caretakers were there, so we got to go into the quonset hut gallery, and into the house.
Then we headed down to Niland on the Salton Sea. We were going to stay at Bashfords RV park, but it was all gravel and no trees. So the others stayed at our artcar friend Charlie's encampment 'East Jesus' out at Slab City, I was going to go back up the sea 30 mins to a campground, then just wussed out and went 10 mins down to the hotel in Calipatria. The bathroom facilities at East Jesus were of the nearest bush/tree sort, which I'm not good with (squatting not easy with a bad back!)
Charlie's place is pretty cool, he's putting together a sculpture garden at his place.
Oh, when we went to Slab City, we also saw an NV art car friend there, who is currently living there. Near his area, there was a little lab/chow puppy that some crackheads had left tied up under a tree there, on a really short rope. Joy couldn't leave her there, so she is now the owner of cute little Lucky!! Gonna be a big dog tho, or I mighta considered nabbing her
The next morning, Tuesday, we checked out the Slab City library, and had a quick stop at the hot springs there, where a couple of them had a bath. On the way out of the area we stopped at Bombay Beach, which is a tiny town, where there is a marina area that had been flooded. There are some submerged cars, trailers etc, cool looking, but stinky there at the shoreline! We then headed up to Palm Springs, the original plan was to get there early enough to go to some thrift stores, but that didn't happen, so we just hopped in the spa, then went across the street to the good seafood place for dinner.
Next day, Wednesday, we hit the road for Techachapi. We stopped along the way near Helendale to see Elmer Long's bottle forest. Elmer is a very nice guy, and we hung out there for a while. He gave me some toys for my truck, and he gave Joy a mannequin, haha.
It was super windy in the area, and all the way driving out to Techachapi. We were going to stay at an RV park there, but it was way too windy for tents and even Emily's aframe popup. Joy and I were stubborn and insisted on staying on this cheaper kinda grotty motel, while Emily went to the Best Western. The bed was terrible, and there were some people that we shared the very thin inside wall who musta been on speed, cause they were up the whole fucking night till like 5am, talking loudly, ugh. So pretty crap night, oh well. The owners were super nice, and gave me toys for my truck, and Joy a great pair of boots for the legs on her car.
Got some pastries for breakky at this awesome german bakery the next morning. Everything was soooooo good, and really reasonably priced. if you ever go thru there, go and drool!
Next morning, we hit the road for home!! I managed to lose everyone a little before we got to Bakersfield, well not lose, they knew I was gonna take off, and I pretty much pushed thur to home, to my sweet sweet Chris! It was good to see him, I wish he coulda come with me.
All in all, a good trip, although plenty of frustration due to the fact that I just don't travel well with more than one other art car, oh well. We did see some really really cool things.
Here's the link to all my photos
http://pics.livejournal.com/joeychen/gallery/0001y86w