The first one is Chloride, a “living ghost town,” meaning that there are still people living there in spite of most of the town being long gone. It was originally a silver mining town which, of course, no longer goes on there.
There is a reconstructed “Old West Town” that is open on weekends with a few shops and the compulsory “shoot-out” at high noon.
A couple shops/galleries were open when we were there, but not much else.
The old-time filling station was no longer open, but certainly looked authentic. I know this shows my age but I can remember stations that looked exactly like this when I was growing up.
As we drove around town, we saw a sign painted in a rock saying, “Murals” so we decided to follow the road and see what was there.
We were not prepared for how BAD the road was. It was a single lane dirt/mud road with large rocks and ruts in it heading out into the mountains. Fortunately, my Honda CRV is 4-wheel drive and could handle it at a very slow and careful pace.
There was snow on the high side of the road and the contrast of snow on cactus was an interesting sight.
The road was so bad it took us about half an hour to go just one mile.
Periodically there were arrows painted on rocks indicating that we were still headed in the right direction. If not for that, we may have given up thinking no one would seriously want folks to keep heading into the wilderness like this.
Finally we find the “murals.” The main one says, “The Journey, Images from an inward search for self.”
There were also lots of ‘Hippie-esq’ pictures that pretty much defy description. In short, we figured the guy who painted these was dipping into various (probably illegal) substances to find inspiration for his art work...or to quote Don, "I think he was smokin' HOOKA!!"
We wandered around up there just a bit, not wanting the trip out insane excuse for a road to be a total waste of time… We were sort of laughing to ourselves that we had risked getting stuck in the mud or breaking an axle out in the middle of nowhere for THIS!
When I had looked up Chloride on the web previously, I had seen something about petroglyphs in the area.
As we stood there shaking our heads at the...a...“artwork” in front of us, we wondered where the petroglyphs might be. We wanted to see something of more value than these murals.
As we stood there taking in the valley views…
…I noticed some rocks just opposite of the “murals.”
Amazingly, we had found the petroglyphs only about 50 feet away.
It was rather ironic, art work by an ancient people, the meaning of which we don’t understand, directly opposite the rather psychedelic-type of work by a more “modern” person that we don’t understand either.
I now end my rather short career as an Art Critic.
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