’20 Jun: Road Trip! LA-Vegas-LA

Windy and I are having a two day Happy Birthday ME drive along the I-15, Road of Roadside Attractions.

Our first stops were on a bit of old ‘Historic Route 66’ that parallels I-15 for a spell. Wiki: Route 66 “was officially removed from the United States Highway System in 1985 after it had been replaced in its entirety by segments of the Interstate Highway System.” States however have integrated some of the remaining road into their own systems with the ‘Historic Route 66’ designation. Here’s something I didn’t know: “The corridor is also being redeveloped into US Bicycle Route 66, a part of the United States Bicycle Route System that was developed in the 2010s.”

There’s a blip in the road, at this point also named National Trails Highway, where some enterprising folk have made a Roadside Attraction out of the nostalgia surrounding Route 66.

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It feels like a home-made project, not one thing that says corporate about this operation.

On Historic Route 66 we also find Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch. I snagged this picture of Elmer Long from another guy’s website so I’m making it really small… According to his site, californiathroughmylens, Elmer died June 22, 2019. I guess his family is keeping the project going. While we were visiting, we saw no evidence of a caretaker though.

The boy there followed us around for a while telling stories about his bottle collection and posing for pictures. It was fun. The whole family was charming, and congratulations to the graduate, and happy which rubs off, but not so much because they weren’t wearing masks. We were, and we kept our distance.

Dr Pepper: “Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2 and 4.” The friendly picker-upper!

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Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch, A Delightful Roadside Attraction

First, lunch, at Peggy Sue’s 50s Diner, and what’s a Road Trip without some Roadside DINOS.

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And lastly, in Baker, across from the Thermometer, Windy went over here to take a picture of this car for Jeff and she ended up giving Jim $20 for a tee shirt, the price for being able to sit in the car, which I must confess to having so strongly urged her to do, and now she’s got a 6” by 4” bruise on her arm. But it was worth it (say I…) for the STORY!

The guy really does/did have a land speed record in this car, and he signed the shirt, so $20, what a deal. He was just hanging out in this gas station, remember it was 99 degrees, waiting to tell stories and sell tee shirts because, like he said, with nowhere to go, what else was he going to be doing.

We wanted to see what we could see of Hoover Dam. The answer is not a glimpse. We did get a few views of Lake Mead but all access to the dam was blocked.

On the right is a very nice viewing station and small exhibition, out of sight of the dam, and this graphic on the left is a large medallion on the ground of the platform.

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Windy hadn’t been to Vegas in 50+ years (!) and of course she would not be able to recognize one single thing. All these pictures are from the internet because we just drove slowly down the strip to amaze at it all. (internet pix)

I got it in my head that I really wanted to see this installation from one of Lilly’s Hands On Art summer projects. This work was the inspiration for an assignment to pile up some things. Oh Yes, right up my alley!

Excerpted from the SevenMagicMountains website: “Seven Magic Mountains was produced by the Nevada Museum of Art and Art Production Fund, opened May 11, 2016, and originally scheduled to be on view for two years. Due to the incredible success of Seven Magic Mountains since its opening, artist Ugo Rondinone has expressed a strong desire to explore ways to keep the artwork on view at its current site. .. At the end of 2018, the Bureau of Land Management issued a three-year permit extension for the artwork, allowing the installation to remain on view through the end of 2021.”

So get it while you can!

From a certain angle, it’s on their website, the pillars are in an actual row and look identically spaced. It’s part of the magic of the work.

Her outfit, simply too cute.

Here’s something new I haven’t tried yet – a SLIDE SHOW above. Pretty cool.

Don’t miss CLICKING the ARROWS for the slide show above.

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We’re pretty adorable too. Most of the people were not wearing masks. Most of the people were traveling in small groups and keeping their distance. It was the great outdoors too, so ok.

All seven are here too! What a Splendid Birthday Event. Just what I wanted to do and I got to do it.

Happy happy Joy joy!