The Car Wash at Sunset

 Last post, I was out in the middle of nowhere (as usual) searching for a giant funnel. Once I found it (it was late afternoon), I set up "camp" (tarp and sleeping bag), and had a lot of time to kill waiting for the Milky Way to rise at about 4 in the morning. So what to do? Fortunately, not far from the funnel is an area called the "car wash", where old car bodies are frozen in time, buried in sand in a desert wash (hence the name). It's a strange site, and makes for some fun photography. And it sure makes you wonder about all these old cars: What are they doing in such a remote location, and how did they get in the wash??

Well, I have a theory. If you look closely at the historic "trash" piles on the property near the car wash, you will see much of it is auto parts. My theory is the person or people who lived here back in the day salvaged the old cars for their parts. Perhaps he/they would use them to repair vehicles of the miners working in the area? So my theory is this was an early version of an auto salvage yard.

The cars that make up the "car wash" are actually just old car bodies... no motors, no transmission, no tires or rims. Just the bodies, picked clean. Not having all the "innards" would make them much lighter, and I can imagine one of those huge desert flash floods pushing these car bodies into this wash. Washed into the wash, so to speak. And here they remain all these years later.

 

Baby blue Cadillac.

 

Somebody left the lights on!

 

 

One nice thing about spending the night out here is I can photograph these old cars at sunset. The few visitors that hike out to this remote spot can't stay for sunset unless they are willing and able to hike back to their car in the dark, which is challenging, and not something most sane people would choose to do.😷 
 

 

Time to vacuum out the car!

 

 

 

My sleeping bag is around here somewhere. Good night!

 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed the old cars!

Linking with Skywatch Friday