Deal of the Day! Route 66

Deal of the Day!

For today only, I am offering the this signed custom print of Route 66 for only $35**.

I'll mail the print to you in a protective tube as soon as the payment is received. You can make your payment through my secure PayPal account by logging into PayPal, choosing the "Send Money" tab, and entering the following email address into the appropriate field: holt@holtwebb.com

If you have any questions, post them here.
Offer expires at midnight Pacific time.
(Add $10 shipping - anywhere in the US)
**The total (including shipping) is $45.

The Vanishing America Project

"What will our country be like 100 years from now? Will there even be wild horses, bears, and mountain lions that aren’t confined to a zoo? Will still there be vast tracts of undiscovered natural wilderness? Will there be such a thing as a small town? Will our descendants even care? If we continue to let Progress go unchecked, these, and other cherished aspects of our country and culture, will be lost to us forever.

Precious aspects of our country and culture are in danger of vanishing within the next 2-3 generations, and photographer/writer Holt Webb is using his artistic eye to show the world what is at stake when we let Progress run rampant.

Beginning in May of 2007, and continuing through the end of 2012, Artist and writer Holt Webb will be driving an ecologically-friendly motor coach, powered by Vegetable Oil and Solar Energy, around the United States documenting and publishing images and stories of American treasures that could be lost to us during our lifetimes.

Holt’s Vanishing America Project looks to enlighten Americans on the fragile nature of our wildlife, our landscapes, and our own ways of life. Subjects include the great, but vulnerable, Okefenokee Swamp, the dying shrimping industry of the Atlantic coast, the uncertain fate of the Wild Mustang, and the search for authentic small-town life. Visiting 49 states, and traveling only by back roads, Holt seeks to capture scenes of America and American life that are all too easily forgotten in this age of technology, reality shows, and global commercialization.

The images and stories he brings back are both beautiful and shocking as we are shown man’s encroachment on nature, nature’s changing ecosystems, and our own forgotten cultural icons.

“America is changing fast. And, often, change is good. But sometimes change destroys the things we love about our country. Hopefully these images, and the ones that will follow as I travel across the United States, will remind people how precious, how ephemeral, and how important these aspects of our country and our culture are.”
-- Holt Webb

Articles, presentations, photo essays, books, Fine Art gallery exhibitions, a documentary, and a TV show will be forthcoming. Holt’s progress can be followed at www.vanishingamerica.net.

Get your kicks...

What a week!

(click on any image to view it full size)

As many of you know, I spent a little over a week in Tucson attending a seminar and shooting near Davis-Monthan Air Force base, home of the famous Airplane Graveyard.

Leaving Tucson, heading back to Redding, I tried to stay on Route 66 to infuse my soul with a little highway history. Never having traveled that historic highway, I was quite impressed with what I saw. Granted, I only drove a small section of 66 from Flagstaff to Barstow, but it gave me a taste of what it must have been like to travel the country during the courtship days of its love affair with the automobile.

Little towns were scattered along the route, some dead and empty, and some turned into tourist traps complete with gunslingers and donkeys, trying to make something out of what remained of their glory days before Interstate 40 took it all away.

Route 66 is a Nationally designated Historic Highway, and I suppose the DOT intends to keep it that way. With I-40 getting the bulk of the DOT's maintenance attention, Route 66 becomes sort of an afterthought. It's asphalt pavement ran the gamut from patched and tolerable to crumbling away, and many sections of it nearly shook the fillings out of my teeth.

It's one redeeming factor is its beauty as a road. This two-lane artery into the heart of America's past ranged from winding serpentine paths barely large enough for the RV, to long, beautiful straightaways that disappeared into the horizon.

Along those winding turns and long stretches of blacktop are the towns that served as rest stops for the traveler heading to the eden of the West Coast. The towns that drew me away from that mesmerizing highway are not the tourist traps with "antique" signs and t-shirts, but rather the places that are forgotten, the places where a hardy few still eke out a living, and the places where empty buildings stand as a reminder of better days.

One of those places was a town called Amboy. Located in California, southwest of Vegas, in the Mojave Desert, Amboy is one of those little towns that had once had a life, but lost it when the interstate came through. It was an important stopover on the way to the coast, but now sits as nothing more than a quaint photo opportunity for those creative souls with cameras.

From time to time, people will stop in Amboy to take snapshots of Roy's Motel and Cafe, a Route 66 icon, built as a stopover for motorists traveling the highway during the glory days of the motor camp.

Back in the '20s, hotels could be found in most cities and vacation destinations, but when it came to traveling the backroads of America, roadside motels were non-existent. If you had to spend the night somewhere during your trip, you either slept in the car or set up a tent.


Enter the motor camp... For only a few dollars, the four-wheeled traveler and his family could stay the night in a cute little cabin or cottage complete with all the amenities of home. Over time, the motor camps gave way to motels, and another page in history's great book was turned.

Amboy never had a chance to grow much beyond "stopover" town, but it grew big enough to have its own school. Now deserted and abandoned, Amboy School sits right next to Roy's Motel, preserved by the dry desert climate and the absence of time.

(I have to ask the question... is there a difference between deserted and abandoned? The dictionary says they mean the same thing. But do they? Does one imply that people are coming back? Can one empty place be both?)

The desert landscape of the Mojave helps to define the solitude of the Amboy schoolyard, where laughing children have been replaced by tumbleweeds and empty chairs. As you walk through the halls of the buildings, you find textbooks and book reports, some boxed up as if to be moved, and the rest scattered across counters and floors like the last day of school, when, as students, we would empty our lockers and throw our papers in the air in triumph of making it to another summer. But the boisterous laughter bouncing through the halls is gone. The only sounds are the breeze blowing through the open doorways, mice scurrying behind the bookshelves, and the echoes of children playing in the schoolyard, as their voices are carried off by the wind.

---

Breakdown...

The drive back to Redding from Tucson was great, until... Thursday night... I pulled over at a park next to Mono Lake to rest for the night. The next morning... engine trouble. The RV had been running fine this whole time, then, all of a sudden, this problem pops up. No warning signs whatsoever. Friday morning I called AAA, Winnebago, Freightliner, and Cummins to help either solve the problem or find a tow to a service center. As it turns out, the engine needs to be diagnosed by a Cummins-certified technician (who hooks it up to a computer), and the nearest Cummins-certified service center is near Reno, Nevada, about 3 hours away.

It took most of Friday to arrange a pickup with AAA. But, the first tow truck that they sent me was way too small, despite them having the size and weight of my vehicle in their notes. So I sat for another day, trying to arrange a tow. I ended up having to call a tow service in Sparks, near Reno, and make arrangements on my own for them to come out and get me. For whatever reason, AAA couldn't do that for me. Nine hours later I'm in Sparks, Nevada waiting for the Cummins service center to open up on Monday.

Fortunately, I still have power, fuel, heat and food, so at least I'm comfortable while I wait. And, as I've mentioned in previous posts, there is good to be found in every situation. And, as if to prove that point, every delay that I encounter has opened another door for me and my project.

I wonder what door this will open...

From Route 66 to the Airplane Graveyard

I'm having FUN now!

On my way to Tucson, I stopped at one of the abandoned parts of old Route 66, in Ludlow, California, just east of Barstow. Ludlow isn't necessarily vanishing... it still has a cafe, gas station, garage, etc., and caters to the locals as well as the truckers that pass through, but right next to the thriving businesses lies a reminder of the pre-Interstate days when Route 66 was the only highway crossing the United States.

This little section of Ludlow has (or should I say "had") everything the traveler would have needed: A cafe, garage, gas station, RV park, and a motel. Now the shells of those once thriving businesses bake in the desert sun, waiting for progress to spread from LA to Flagstaff, and from Flagstaff to LA, to meet in the middle, clear the debris and start anew.

From Ludlow, it took another two days to get to Tucson (remember, I'm taking my time to "smell the roses"), and find my way to the "home base" of my Silver Wings series. We're still working on getting permission to photograph at the Davis-Monthan AFB "Airplane Graveyard" in Tucson, but I won't be short of subject matter while I'm waiting. Ben Cooke, one of the team members at Arlene Howard Public Relations got me something almost as good as the Graveyard itself. Ben was able to get me permission to shoot at Aircraft Restoration and Marketing (ARM), a yard right next to the Air Force Base, who specializes in restoring or scrapping decomissioned military aircraft. As I pulled through the gates, the local country radio station was playing a new song by Gary Allen titled, Watching Airplanes. How's that for good timing? You can hear the song on his website, www.garyallen.com.

ARM has have numerous planes on site ranging from the huge C130 cargo carrier to little reconnaissance jets and the famous Air and Sea Rescue Grumman Albatross. And, Linda, who manages the site is so helpful, she is willing to let me wander the grounds on my own and doesn't mind if I climb onto and even into some of the aircraft.

Of course, they require that I sign a waiver releasing them from liability if I hurt myself, but that's a no-brainer. Between me and you, if you knowingly walk into an area where you might get hurt, and you do get hurt, you've nobody to blame but yourself. As they say on the farm, "If you're man enough to wrestle a bull, you're man enough not to cry about it when he stomps the crap out of you."

So, with my hardhat on my noggin, and my cameras in hand, I'll be getting up tomorrow at the crack of dawn to make the most of the desert's beautiful sunrises.

Let's go shoot some planes!