Day 493
Slab City
We finally tore ourselves away from Bombay Beach, all was quiet, no one humming My Way, just that lady who did it her way, still stuck in the sand! She needs to call our AAA hero from Yosemite!
The ride was mile after flat mile. Quiet roads, long trains passing to keep us company, the final few hills of the Rockies on our right and the first sight of the hills in Mexico in the distance. First though we had another desert city to visit, the wonder that is Slab City. A former military base, Camp Dunlap, now the ‘last free place in the USA’. Covering 640 acres, after the military left the squatters moved in. Creating dwellings from whatever they could find. Living off grid. Some used this space to create artwork from ‘rubbish’ and now Slab City is a tourist attraction. ‘East Jesus’ is an outdoor art gallery, the BBC visited and were so impressed they filmed a documentary.
We had come to see the outdoor church created by Leonard Knight. He had moved here in 1981 to escape what he saw as a world that had lost its way. He wanted to create a piece of artwork, from any materials he could find, to honour Jesus. What was originally intended as a temporary piece still stands today, a decade after Leonard left. He died in 2014, it seemed so sad to me that he was not able to end his days here. The church looks freshly painted and clearly Slab City citizens are looking after this crazy structure. Thomas and Louise who we met at Bombay City were here too. Everywhere we looked there was rubbish and decay transformed into art. Crazy, weird and wonderful. Reluctantly we left. Baja California here we come.
