Nothing Behind It
for Miles
A googie sign standing on a road with nothing behind it for forty miles. Spires with no tree, no fence and no person to say how big they are. The desert hands you emptiness by default — the discipline is composing for it rather than cropping it out.
The Threads
what the day is really aboutTwo subjects that are both really about what surrounds them. The Trona spires have no scale reference anywhere — no tree, no building, nothing to say whether they are ten feet or a hundred. And Roy’s sign is a piece of 1950s optimism with an empty road running past it. In both, the subject occupies a third of the frame at most, and the emptiness is doing the work.
And under it one rhythm: no scale, no company, no horizon to speak of. Two ways of being alone in a frame.
Give it two-thirds nothing. Charge at Twentynine Palms on the way in and on the way out, and sleep there. Stand further back than feels right.
Teaches · Negative Space — after Lucien Hervé · Grant Mudford
The Map
where it all is · tap a point for its legOpen the whole day in Google Maps ↗ — in order: Trona Pinnacles · Amboy. It routes from wherever the phone is, and every spot below links its own leg the same way.
Tap any point for the day it belongs to. A long dog-leg across the desert — and the route between the two is set by where the chargers are, not by the shortest line.
Nothing here takes a booking and nothing here charges admission — Trona is BLM land with no gate, and Roy’s is a privately owned roadside you look at from the road. What the trip costs is charging, two beds and two early alarms.
The Days
three days · two nights · one long empty roadA weekend's unit is the day — each carries a locator map, its theme, and an energy read. A gold pill on the clock means that time belongs to someone else: a door that opens or a slot that was booked. Everything unpilled is a suggested shape, not a schedule.
One stop, and the whole afternoon to work it.
The route crosses passes between three and four and a quarter thousand feet in a winter window, and the Park Service says the higher ground here does get snow. Snow on the hills is scenery. Snow or chains on the road is a no-go: this car does not drive on it.
Up over Soledad Pass into the high desert. It is ~142 mi to Inyokern on the 14 and the 395, which is past what a full battery covers driven hard with the climb, so the first charge comes early.
A quick one at the edge of the Antelope Valley, and it turns the long run north into an easy one.
Up through the high desert and into the Indian Wells valley.
Fill it and eat. There is nothing at Trona and nothing on the dirt road in, and from here the Pinnacles and the run back to Ridgecrest are about fifty miles together.
The five miles in are washboard and slow but perfectly fine in a normal car in dry conditions. After rain the clay turns to grease and the road is genuinely impassable, so check the sky rather than the calendar.
Five hundred tufa spires standing out of a dead flat lakebed. They are not wind-carved rock — they grew underwater, as calcium carbonate, in a lake that is no longer here. Spend the flat hours walking: the whole problem of the place is that there is no scale reference anywhere, so the pictures that work are the ones that lean into that rather than fighting it.
The hour that makes the place. Long shadows across a flat pan give you an edge to compose against, and the spires stop reading as a clump and become individual objects standing apart.
Back out the way you came in and west to the night’s bed. There is no Tesla charging in Ridgecrest, which is why tomorrow starts at Inyokern.
Cross the desert, take one frame worth having, and stop.
A short hop the wrong way first. Yesterday leaves about half a battery, and Barstow is past that once the climb is counted; this buys it back.
Full, and the day can start.
Down out of the Indian Wells valley and across to the I-15 corridor, into the sunrise.
Fill it and eat. The next stop is a charger too, but this is the last real food until Twentynine Palms tonight.
This is the leg that looks like a mistake on a map and is not. Going straight east from Barstow along Route 66 reaches Amboy in about eighty-six miles — and then there is no charging of any kind in reach, back or forward. Twentynine Palms is the only Supercharger that puts Amboy inside a round trip.
The one that matters. Arrive on about a fifth, leave full: the road down to Amboy loses height overall, and most of the climb comes on the way back.
Straight north out of the Morongo Basin and down onto the Bristol dry lake. Roy’s appears from a long way off.
The sign is the picture: a 1950s googie mast relit in 2019 after about thirty years dark, standing over a road with nothing behind it in either direction. Shoot it small. The instinct is to fill the frame with the sign and the instinct is wrong — the point is the forty miles of nothing it is standing in. The crater is next door and this plan does not take it: two hours of walking, and the miles come out of a battery that still has to climb back to Twentynine Palms.
The same road the other way, uphill, in the last of the afternoon light. Do not wander east along Route 66 first; the margin is for the driving, not for side trips.
Second fill of the day at the same eight stalls, and the end of the day. Sunset is about 16:45, so the light goes while it charges — and nothing after it is a two-lane desert road in the dark.
Nothing to shoot. Get home rested.
The same morning check as the other two days, on the two roads this one uses.
Up through Yucca Valley, down the Morongo grade to the 10 and west over the San Gorgonio Pass into the basin. Shorter than going back through Barstow, and inside the budget from a full battery.
A short one, so the run home is not a range question.
An ordinary hour on the freeway, and the trip is done.
The Spots
where to stand · what the light does · who built itTwo anchors, each of which wants you to stand further back than feels right. Nothing bookable, nothing to pay. Tap a spot’s map for driving directions.
- Stand
- Far enough back that a spire is small. There is no scale reference and that is the subject.
- Light
- Late afternoon. Long shadows across the pan separate the spires from each other.
- Frame
- One or two spires occupying a third of the frame, the flat lakebed doing the rest. On the 38V.
- See
- Not wind-carved hoodoos — calcium carbonate deposited underwater in Pleistocene Searles Lake.
- Stand
- Across the road, and further back than you want to be.
- Light
- Hard and high in the early afternoon, which suits a sign read as a shape. Note the shadow falls behind it at this hour — if you want the shadow raking toward you, that is a much earlier or later frame than the charging allows.
- Frame
- The sign small against an empty road and an empty sky. On the 38V — the 90V would fill the frame with it.
- See
- 🔴 A photo stop, not a service stop — café and cottages are shut and the town's population is zero.
Before You Go
the pack, the dirt roads, and the one charging ruleCamera
- Hasselblad X2D II, the 38V and the 90V, in color
- Spare batteries — the X2D will not last the day on one
- A cloth — a dirt road and a dry lakebed
Body
- Layers — desert mornings in winter are properly cold
- Water for both stops — neither has any
- Sun cover even in January
Car
- 🔴 Leave on 100%, and charge Palmdale and Inyokern on the way up
- 🔴 Barstow to 100%, then Twentynine Palms before Amboy and again after it · 8 stalls, 150 kW · Amboy is ~51 mi each way
- Leave Twentynine Palms on 100% on day three, and Ontario to 70% on the way home
- Planned on ~165 usable mi from full, driven hard · no leg over 140 from 100%, never under 10%
- One dirt road: Trona's 5 mi, fine dry in this car, impassable wet
Food
- Eat at Barstow — there is nothing at Amboy
- Carry lunch for day two
- Dinner in Twentynine Palms, the second night
What You Got
the frames that survived the editThe geotag gets each frame close to where it stood — close, not exact; the last hundred yards are always a hunt. What a machine can't do is the part below: which ones survived, and whether the day was worth the drive.
The frame of the trip.
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Did I stand far enough back, or did I fill the frame out of habit?
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Which of the two emptinesses actually carried a picture?
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After
what the day taughtIs 'two-thirds nothing' a rule I can actually hold under pressure?
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Trona with no scale reference — did that read, or just look small?
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Was the second night right, or would I rather have driven it in one?
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What else out here is worth the drive, now I know the road — Kelso Dunes, in a car that can reach the trailhead?
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