California - Slab City

I don't think that we've really been "off grid" yet on this crazy trip of ours. We've certainly gone a few days without showering but if the situation really called for it, access to plumbing could have been found. 

There is no plumbing in Slab City...
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Our journey here began with our victorious exit from Indio in a van that was purring like a kitten. Pre-mechanical failure, I had just accepted the rattling of the stove top cover when the van hit speeds over 90 km/h was just one of the van's charming quirks. As it turns out this was actually caused by the instability of that disintegrating U-joint and since we just got a new one it felt like we were driving on clouds.

Our original plan to camp along the Salton Sea was quashed when we discovered that the site fees were upwards of $30 a night, and instead we just pushed on to Slab City. 

For those who may not know what Slab City is, back in the fifties the US government closed and tore down an old military base outside Niland, California. The remaining concrete “slabs” have since become a haven for a strange collective of winter-escaping “snowbirds”, transients, lost souls, and girls in vans. The slabs have been overgrown with desert bushes and various bits of junk, left over from sixty years of hobo habitation, and it definitely makes for an interesting place to camp for free.

The entrance to Slab City is marked by Salvation Mountain, the life-long art project of a man named Leonard Knight. For the last thirty years he has been constructing a gargantuan mountain out of mud, hay, copious amounts of paint, various bits of scrap metal and whatever he can scavenge from the desert, all in an effort to spread the word of the Lord. 

Salvation Mountain. 

In 2007 part of the movie “Into the Wild” was filmed at Slab City, featuring Leonard himself, and a glimpse at the the real-life annual Talent Show, an event which we apparently missed by one weekend!

The night we arrived, we miraculously found the discreet dirt road in the dark, and since it was quite late the second we saw a few RV's, we basically just parked so we wouldn't disturb anyone with the headlights from the van. 

Once TJ cut the engine and the lights went out, it was a strange atmosphere; it took us a while for our eyes to adjust to the lack of electrical light, but since it was a clear sky and there was a bright moon, the visibility of our surroundings was quite good.

TJ in the van by the light of the moon.

The next day, we wandered into Niland hoping to find hot coffee and perhaps some provisions for the van. I don't know what they call the stuff we drank, but it was 100% not made from any sort of coffee bean. 

On our way in the night before we noticed a sign for “Jaquim’s 99¢ Store” and thought it would have some van-like provisions we might find useful. From a distance, Jaquim’s still appeared to be a store…but on closer inspection the once glorious penny store had burnt to the ground some time ago. The sign still remains.

While the sun was still out we decided to check out Leonard’s Salvation Mountain, as we didn’t get a good look in the dark the night before.

Everything is covered in paint; Leonard’s house, his cars, his tractors…the dirt mountain, everything. At first glance it appears that it is just a paint covered hill, but off in the corner there is an entrance to an Alice in Wonderland-like cavern with old cars fixed into the walls, glass windows offering a glimpse inside other compartments, and a ceiling of tree branches that have all been doused in thick layers of paint. I liken the scenery to the candy room in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where everything looks edible or at least candy coated to some degree. 

Inside Salvation Mountain

On our way out, Leonard himself appeared, grizzled with age and deaf in one ear. He posed for photographs, and handed us about 12 postcards and a jigsaw puzzle of the mountain. TJ and I had hoped to have a conversation with him and maybe ask him a few questions about the mountain and what it’s like living in Slab City, but there was a gaggle of other tourists there, and it was his dinner time, so we satisfied ourselves with a quick picture and left.

TJ and I with Leonard Knight at Salvation Mountian

We met a girl in the parking lot who offered to show us around the Slabs in exchange for camping near her. Apparently females below the age of 60 are uncommon in Slab City, and she was glad for some younger company.

Firstly, we stopped at The Oasis, a makeshift kitchen that provided us with a $2 spaghetti dinner and garlic bread. They had a free table full of various bits of clothing, single Trivial Pursuit cards lining the benches, and a trailer full of books as a tiny library (apparently there is a much larger library further in, but we didn't make it over to see it).

What it's like in the slabs.

After we ate, found a slab for the night, and climbed out into the twilight evening, our new companion directed us down the road to a slab that had a fire going and we crashed their gathering. The “owner” of this slab offered us each a beer and told us all about a variety of projects he was working on while occasionally feeding his dog bits of hotdog from his white bread sandwich. 

He was in the process of building a skate park in the old military swimming pool behind him, (but because of the rain it was full of water now), and he’s also started excavating the basement that had been filled in when the government tore the base down. No bodies yet, but he has found several coke bottles from the '50s buried in the filler.

Even though, on paper, it's just a bunch of cement slabs in the middle of the desert, there is so much more to this place. Everyone is incredibly friendly and kind, and they're also either on the same kind of journey we are, or if they're not, they totally get what the Van Plan is all about. These are our people, at least in spirit. 

If I could just find a way to shower, I could stay here forever.