Just returned from spending a month meandering through
California all the way up to Neah Bay. Neah Bay ain't neah anything, but it is
the furthest northwest corner of the lower 48 (kinda like Key West is the
furthest Southeast corner).
Saw a ton of interesting things (interesting at least to
me, you judge for yourself).
Southern Arizona seems to be the Mecca for solar projects
(makes sense, God knows they get a lot of sunshine). I came across the Solana
power plant only because I turned off the highway to go view this place:
Stupid me, it's not like you can't see plenty of this graffiti all over the
Arizona desert 
The Solana power plant is impressive to begin with, but
it gets even more impressive the closer you get.
From a distance it’s hard to even figure out what it is
(you won’t even notice it from the highway - Interstate 8)
When you get closer you realize it’s bigger than you
thought.
Here’s where it gets weird. No photography is
allowed (I had to take the above photo while driving past– made me feel like
Bond,,,,,,James Bond). If you try to look up a satellite photo on MapQuest or
Google earth you won’t find it. I don’t know why, the stupid thing is
1,927 acres big. Either way the technology is not quite what I assumed it was.
The parabolic mirrors are probably 25 feet tall. They track the sun like
a sunflower does. I assumed that the pipe you see at the focal point contained
water which was then zapped into steam which would power the turbine generator.
It’s not so simple. The pipe actually contains molten salt. Salt
(actually a blend of three) melts at 268 degrees. The mirrors whack it up to
about 1,000 degrees. They pump the salt into a big storage tank. The
molten salt is then run through a heat exchanger with water to create steam for
the generator. The beauty of this system is that the power plant will continue
to produce power for about 6 hours after the sun goes down. This plant produces
280 megawatts. That’s a lot! Enough to run 230,000 homes (well, 230,000
normal homes – probably only 1,200 homes with teenagers that leave everything
on all of the time). Salt water is corrosive as all hell. Imagine what
molten salt will do to your metal pipes.
One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was look at
stuff I never had time for before. For example, I lived in Los Angeles
for years and never saw the Hollywood sign up close.
Turns out there’s a good reason for that – you can’t get
close easily (unless you’re a fireman and have the key to the gate guarding the
steep road up the mountain). If you really want to see the sign up close
– stand by for a 3 hour hike in the heat.
Riding a horsie
is the easy way.
When you finally get there you’ll notice several things
about the sign. For one thing – it’s big (duh). The letters
are 30’ wide and 43’ tall.
The original sign was built in 1923 (and read
Hollywoodland.)
It wasn’t easy to
build. It took 200 laborers to cut a 7 mile road to move all the crap up
there. The first sign was outlined by 4,000 20-watt bulbs spaced 8
“apart. They blinked in sequence Holly, wood, land, period (a big dot no longer
there). It was intended to only last 18 months.
Like everything in Hollywood, the sign has a dark side
(no, not the back). In 1932, Peg Entwistle, a New York stage actress came out
to Hollywood with the usual dreams.
No one was interested in
her so she took a swan dive off the letter H. “Peg Entwistle – dubbed by tabloids as the “The Hollywood Sign
Girl” – was only 24 years old. According to Hollywood legend (probably bullshit), a letter to Peg arrived the day after her death from the Beverly
Hills Playhouse. She was offered the lead role in a play…about a woman driven
to suicide.” Yeah, right. Whatever, the splat mark is gone.
By the early 40′s, the Hollywoodland real estate
development went bust. The Sign (which hadn’t been maintained in years) quietly
became property of the city in 1944. The sign continued to be neglected (due to
the war) and fell in disrepair. The H crumbled.
“In 1949, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce finally came
to the rescue of the ailing Sign, removing the letters that spelled “LAND” and
repairing the rest, including the recently toppled “H.” That renovation
lasted a few years. By the 70’s it was falling apart again.
In 1973 some pranksters altered the Sign’s letters to
read “Hollyweed” (advocating looser marijuana laws)
That stunt (and another one - “Holywood”,
commemorating a visit from Pope John Paul II in 1987) pissed off the city
board. In 1973, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board gave the Sign
official landmark status. “By the late 1970′s, the Hollywood Chamber of
Commerce determined that the Sign required a complete rebuilding – carrying a
price tag of a quarter million dollars.”
Oddly enough, it was this guy who raised the money to
rebuild it (once again)
Yup, that’s Hugh Hefner. He hosted a gala fundraiser at
the Playboy Mansion, where individual Sign letters were ceremonially
‘auctioned’ off at $27,700 per letter. In 1978, 194 tons of concrete, enamel
and steel later, the Sign was re-born
Since then, the sign has been repainted. First in
1995 (courtesy of Dutch Boy Paints). Then again in 2005 (courtesy Bay Cal
Painting and Construction). In 2013 Sherwin Williams got in the act and
donated special “eco-friendly, long lasting Emerald Exterior Acrylic Latex
paint” and the labor for a 10-week facelift to the Hollywood Sign.
If you ask me, the thing is in great shape
This is as close to the sign as you can get. Do NOT
climb over the fence to touch it. The sign is very closely guarded.
It has an
impressive array of sensors. TV cameras, infrared cameras, motion
detectors, etc. It also has it's very own LAPD officer on site 24/7. If you
climb over, sit on the sign and take a selfie - you'll also receive a matching
mug shot to go with it.
What I found next to where I parked to hike the sign,
however, was even more interesting. Stay tuned.
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