Watch your speed limit in those small towns! The whole county budget might depend on the local highway patrolman and his uncle judge.
Watch your speed limit in those small towns! The whole county budget might depend on the local highway patrolman and his uncle judge.
When a girlfriend came over to the US from Australia in 1984, we took a road trip through the Southwest in my VW bug. She would blast thru the small towns and I'd have to get after her to slow down...she was looking on the wrong side of the road for the speed limit signs. We never got stopped, but her accent would have melted the heart of most small town cops.
"Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China
Some of those law enforcement types, at least in certain small towns on the eastern edge of the state, already have more wives apiece than they deserve. No wonder they need to levy so many fines from out-of-state license plates.
Fundamentalist Mormon groups. Other Mormon and offshoot groups in the area who don't practice Polygamy. Partoun and Eskdale have some of these with Eskdale a whole community, school and all.Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
” Never attribute to inspiration that which can be adequately explained by delusion”.
It spills over not only into Nevada but Idaho and Arizona. The most infamous polygamist cults are actually in the Arizona strip north of the Colorado River, but outside Utah jurisdiction. Some in Idaho involve white supremacist neo-Nazi members and have violent rivalries with other groups. I've been stopped and hassled a number of times. But outsiders are usually not in serious danger because most of these groups want to avoid attracting public attention. They just want you gone, moving along, with no cameras pointed their direction. It's too late for Colorado City; now the whole world knows what went on there. Such beautiful country, such sad people. I know far more than I'm willing to describe here, heard lots of first-hand accounts, know some of the real history from contemporaneous records - stuff that's pretty hush hush now.
hey guys I appreciate the insight but now this is way way way... way off topic
Waaaay off? Hardly. How would you like to have your hands atop your vehicle while all your valuable camera gear and camping stuff was being rifled through by a local sheriff and deputy in the middle of the night with pointy beards down to their stomachs? Or how about an incontestable ticket for running a red light in a county that doesn't even have a single stoplight? Remember, you can be a darn long ways from anywhere in some of those places. I had an assistant of mine thrown in a jail cell for three days in Nevada without even being allowed a phone call. Illegal, sure. But it was his word against theirs. Most of the income in some of those little places comes from highly illegal activity; so you have to keep in mind they might be real criminals, not just seemingly odd people. I love driving through Nevada; but I'm sure as heck not going to risk getting shot at for setting up a view camera in a dicey situation. Med format SLR's are meant for that - get it done fast and keep movin'. I grew up around some of those kinds of people, so know to take them seriously.
hey drew I was referring to the polygamy and other people related things...
Oh well. Ya gotta understand that being from a scruffy rural background myself, sharing stories about tight scrapes is just part of the whole point of traveling to begin with. I rode the range with a family of Nevada mustangers when I was 16. They came from managing a million acre ranch in Nevada all by themselves and had a lot of wild west still in them. A wonderful family if you didn't cross them; I saw what happened to those that did. Nevada contains some real characters. And what I was sorta hinting at, is that some of them don't like a camera aimed at some very photogenic subjects they might personally find sensitive. Even a pretty beaver pond might be a point of contention if someone is having a feud with the BLM and claims squatters rights to it. Chances are, that's not going to be the case; but if someone does happen to be there staring at you squinty-eyed, discretion is the better part of valor. When in doubt, I shoot quickie MF. But don't underestimate the demographic issues. Rural Nevada tends to be quite different from Reno or Vegas. Most important - hope for serious clouds. They can utterly transform the landscape into sheer magic. I pulled out an old neg a few weeks ago with a gigantic thunderhead right above a herd of black wild mustangs on a white salt pan. Glad I had a 450 lens along for my 4x5, cause those horses were very skittish.
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