Slab City, California Observations
We recently visited Slab City, California; it is located just southeast of the Salton Sea.
Slab City started as a Marine training base during WWII. When the base was no longer needed, the buildings were removed from their foundations, leaving bare concrete slabs.
I had pictured dozens and dozens of empty slabs arranged on a grid of roads available for camp sites. The reality is that there are not quite so many slabs and that all of the slabs are in use by others; most slabs with some kind of structure built on them. Some people live there year round; others during the winter. No utilities and little infrastructure.
We did find an amiable fellow who had dragged an open boat up on one end of “his” slab. He was framing it in preparation to closing the walls. He did let us pull the van up on the other end of the slab and take a picture; concrete step leading up to a PW on a slab.
Another desirable camping site option was the area maintained by the local Loners on Wheels chapter near the east end of LoW Road. Their area looked so good that there was talk about Vickie, my wife, staying out of sight while we camped there. Google Earth shows how well the chapter has cleaned its area.
We ended up camping on a random patch of desert; of which there is much.
On the road to Slab City sits colorful Salvation Mountain; the two decade + tribute to God by one man. I found that after climbing “the yellow brick road” to the top of the Mountain that the shortest, and safest, way down for me was to sit and slide down the back of the Mountain to a dirt road.
Chuck Sorensen
Buellton, California
2012 PW Excel TS
Slab City started as a Marine training base during WWII. When the base was no longer needed, the buildings were removed from their foundations, leaving bare concrete slabs.
I had pictured dozens and dozens of empty slabs arranged on a grid of roads available for camp sites. The reality is that there are not quite so many slabs and that all of the slabs are in use by others; most slabs with some kind of structure built on them. Some people live there year round; others during the winter. No utilities and little infrastructure.
We did find an amiable fellow who had dragged an open boat up on one end of “his” slab. He was framing it in preparation to closing the walls. He did let us pull the van up on the other end of the slab and take a picture; concrete step leading up to a PW on a slab.
Another desirable camping site option was the area maintained by the local Loners on Wheels chapter near the east end of LoW Road. Their area looked so good that there was talk about Vickie, my wife, staying out of sight while we camped there. Google Earth shows how well the chapter has cleaned its area.
We ended up camping on a random patch of desert; of which there is much.
On the road to Slab City sits colorful Salvation Mountain; the two decade + tribute to God by one man. I found that after climbing “the yellow brick road” to the top of the Mountain that the shortest, and safest, way down for me was to sit and slide down the back of the Mountain to a dirt road.
Chuck Sorensen
Buellton, California
2012 PW Excel TS
