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Saturday, March 12, 2011

IN SEARCH OF RANDOLPH SCOTT’S CAMPFIRE…54 YEAR’S LATER

DOESN’T THIS JUST MAKE YOU WANT TO STRAP ON THE BOARDS, POINT YOUR FEET DOWN HILL & SKI, SKI, SKI:)) (300mm)

Had myself a great super Saturday morning. Among the many brochures we picked up the other day was self guided tour showing 10 movie locations on Movie Road in the Alabama Hills. Kelly isn’t quite the western Cowboy oriented person that I am so she elected to sit the ‘movie tour’ out this morning. Hopped in the Jeep & away I went. Scouted out a few roads nearby & discovered oodles & oodles of Boondocking spots scattered throughout the Alabama Hills. And, it’s all BLM land. What an absolutely great place this is. So many quiet out of the way sites. No need to stay in this campground if we pass this way again.

THE ALABAMA HILLS ARE CRISSCROSSED WITH COUNTLESS MILES OF JEEP ROADS & NUMEROUS BOONDOCKING SPOTS…HOW CAN RVING GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS EH:))

As a small boy, Hopalong Cassidy was my Cowboy hero & I even had some Hoppy stuff as I recall. As a young boy in the early 50’s we would sometimes go to the Saturday Matinee in Stratford’s Avon Theater & it was here on the big Technicolor screen & Hi-Fi sound that I first saw Randolph Scott. He quickly became my new Cowboy hero & never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that one day I would be standing in the exact same spot where my hero once sat next to a desert campfire with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the background. Well, today I stood on that very spot:))

THIS WAS MY FAVORITE FIND THIS MORNING…MY HAT ON THE GROUND MARKS THE SPOT WHERE YOU CAN SEE RANDOLPH SCOTT SITTING BY THE CAMP FIRE TALKING TO FELLOW ACTOR RICHARD BOONE WHO WOULD LATER GO ON TO PLAY PALADIN IN THE TV SERIES…’HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL’

My goal this morning was to find & photograph some of the movie sites that were in the movie guide book. Wanted to take the same photo the book showed from the old movies. I love that kind of Geographical sleuthing. With my trusty self guided tour book in hand I headed off down ‘Movie Road’ to see if I could find those very locations. Found the place where western star Audie Murphy had galloped his horse while leading another horse in the movie, Showdown. A bit further down the road a left turn into the desert led me to the exact spot where the graveside scene took place in the movie Rawhide. My hat sits atop the round stone where that scene took place.

(click to enlarge pictures)

A short drive from the Rawhide location I began looking for the village of Tantrapur which was built for the movie, Gunga Din. Of course the Hollywood built movie village site is long gone but I could see the location where it had been. While at that same spot I was also able to find two more movie locations with the first one being a scene from the movie, The Gay Caballero starring Cesar Romero.

MY HAT SITS ATOP A ROCK JUST BEHIND CESAR ROMERO’S FEET

This ‘Cabellero’ spot was not an easy find & easily took a good half hour of walking around because I had a couple rock formations mixed up. From the same location I took this shot I had only to turn around & walk about 10 feet to do the Randolph Scott & Richard Boone Tall T location photo. And, from there it was a short walk to line up a second location from the movie Gunga Din.

JEEP IS SITTING WHERE THE BRIDGE IN THE SCENE STRETCHED ACROSS IN THE MOVIE…PHOTO AT RIGHT SHOWS WHERE THE MOVIE CREW HAD ANCHORED THE BRIDGE TO ROCK ON THE LEFT.

Again, it was only another short walk in the soft desert sand to the next movie location showing a Stagecoach scene from How The West Was Won.

And, just a few feet from where that scene was filmed, only coming the other way, was a runaway Buckboard scene with a lady spilling out of it. This was the last picture I took before heading back to the rig.

Movie Road is only about a mile & a half from our campground here at Tuttle & if we make it back this way again we will find us a Boondocking spot over there in that movie location area next time. That very area I first saw as a young boy, gazing starry eyed up at that big Saturday afternoon Matinee movie screen, watching Randolph Scott ride his big brown horse through the desert of rocks, sand & mountains. WOW, did I ever have myself a great Saturday morning:))

CAME ACROSS THIS CAVE ENTRANCE FRIDAY….SOMEONE MAY HAVE LIVED IN HERE AT ONE TIME BECAUSE A SMALL STOVEPIPE WAS INSERTED IN A SMALL OPENING ALLOWING SMOKE TO COME OUT ONE OF THOSE HOLES IN THE ROCK ABOVE THE ENTRANCE

In recent years the Alabama Hills movie location has been used in Star Trek V & VII, Tremors, Gladiator, Dinosaur & as recently as Robert Downey Junior’s, ‘Ironman.’

GROANER’S CORNER:(( What do you call a country where everyone has to drive a red car?
A red carnation.
What do you call a country where everyone has to drive a pink car?
A pink car-nation.
What would the country be called if everyone in it lived in their cars?
An in-car-nation.

Hey, I don’t write these things, I just stick em in the blog…..A:))

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Technorati Tags: Tuttle Campground,Boondocking,Gunga Din,Audie Murphy,Cesar Romero,Randolph Scott,Richard Boone,Have Gun Will Travel,The Gay Cabellero,Rawhide,The Tall T,How The West Was Won,Stagecoach,Buckboard,Hell Bent For Leather,Tantrapur,Showdown,Alabama Hills,Lone Pine California

Friday, March 11, 2011

MANZANAR….THE WAY IT WAS

MANZANAR…..THOUSANDS OF NAMES

Before coming to Lone Pine the word Manzanar didn’t mean anything to us. In fact, the first time we ran across the name was on a roadside sign a couple days ago north of Lone Pine. We had missed a left turn in town while looking for the Tuttle campground & ended up driving a few miles north of town. A Government type sign said Manzanar National Historic Site half a mile ahead. We used the turn to get ourselves back on track for Lone Pine. I remember glancing to my right & seeing a bunch of cars in a parking lot outside a large building that looked like an Airplane hanger. No idea what it was all about then, but by the end of today we knew very well what it was all about.

We pulled into the large parking of the MANZANAR HISTORICAL SITE about 11:35 this morning & headed for a large building. I noticed the wide concrete sidewalks seemed fairly new & attention had been paid to disabled parking & a concrete ramp into the building. We just made it in time to see a 25 minute film about what happened to the thousands of Japanese American people after America entered into war with Japan following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7th, 1941. Kelly & I were the only one’s in the theater.

I won’t go into the history of this historic site because you can get all that from the Manzanar link. But, I can tell you a bit about the interpretive center itself.

Upon entering the original large Auditorium built by internees in 1944 I was immediately aware of voices. Couldn’t quite pinpoint the voices but I could hear muffled voices like people talking. I could hear the sound of children coming from somewhere. I figured a bus tour was in progress somewhere ahead of me amongst the many exhibits. Yet, as I walked further into the center I did not see anyone. But, there just seemed to be many voices in the air.

Took me a few minutes to realize that it was the many voices of recorded people coming from the various displays themselves. It was the sound of the Japanese people talking of their experiences before, during, & after their internment in the camp. Stories of sadness & frustration. Stories of hope & determination.

This is a well laid out interpretive center with many photographs & artifacts. And it is all laid out on the old Auditorium floor complete with the original stage at one end of the building. I particularly noticed the lighting on the exhibits. Having worked in an Art Gallery in Stratford Ontario back in the early nineties I have a wee bit of lighting experience under my belt so I always notice how exhibits are set up & lit.

I especially liked the large panels suspended from the ceiling in one section with all the names of people who once lived in America’s largest Japanese/American internment camp. Upwards of 120,000 people crammed in long wooden buildings on just 814 acres of dry land…..& they had to call it home.

We spent over an hour in the interpretive center & then spent another hour on a driving tour of the grounds. At first glance there isn’t much to see where the camp once stood. Not much that is until you start looking closer. A cement slab here, an old bent water pipe jutting out of the ground there & a lot of curious square cement blocks. Wooden sign posts along the way said Block 12 or 21 or 2. These are the locations of close to a thousand buildings long since been dismantled & taken away. But, we did see two buildings under construction to replicate the original buildings that housed the people. And, we think there is a third cookhouse type building being constructed as well.

THIS STONE WALKWAY ONCE LED TO THE CAMP’S HOSPITAL

Noticed in the film we watched the Japanese people had tended gardens, planted an apple orchard & built about a dozen beautiful Japanese flower & water gardens. We found some of those gardens today. As with so many things in history there wasn’t much left of the once beautiful gardens. All the plants, flowers & trees are long gone but the rock lined concrete ponds, spillways & tiny waterfalls still remain. But, no water has flowed over those dusty rocks since the last of the Japanese people left at the end of the war. Always sad to see crumbling ruins where there once was life & laughter.

THESE WERE ONCE THE HOSPITAL’S JAPANESE GARDENS

More wooden signs told us where the Apple Orchard was, the hospital, nurses quarters, the laundry & heating building. And then we saw a sign that said Cemetery. Only a few remains are left here but it is a Sacred Place for the Japanese people. The Cemetery was actually located just outside of the camp because the Japanese people did not want their remains interred within the camp boundaries itself.

We stopped & looked at a large slab of broken cement where a building once stood that housed weaving machines. Camp residents worked here making camouflage netting for the war effort. Just beyond that we passed out of the camp’s old stone gates, said good-bye to the spirits of Manzanar & headed ourselves home.

We had planned to do the ‘Movie Road’ tour today but Kelly knew she would have a lot of Deer Park Lodge work waiting for her so we headed back to the rig & called it a day. Just another fine one alongside the snow capped Sierra Nevada Mountains.