BAKER, Calif. — Situated in the middle of this really tiny desert town, Arne's Royal Hawaiian motel was probably never anything but a rest stop for drivers en route to Las Vegas or Death Valley National Park.
Call me morbid, but on a recent trek back from Vegas, I had to pull over on Route 15 and take a look.
After all, the motel still stands. It's not boarded up, knocked down or awaiting demolition. It just sits there, a ghost of its former self, without even bothering with a "closed" sign.
Amidst the rows of fast food restaurants, gas stations, what's billed as the world's largest thermometer and one remaining, functioning motel, the Santa Fe, Baker offers a classic drive in and out desert town. Two local restaurants are known to motorists due to their heavy Route 15 billboard ads, Bun Boy and the Mad Greek.
The Greek still thrives, just across the way from Arne's, while the Bun Boy closed in 2013.
According to strayngerranger.com, Arne's opened in 1957 and closed in 2009. If you want to have some fun, read the reviews on Yelp, where others like me write of stopping to shoot selfies in front of the former shell of the motel, and invent tall tales about pulling up, finding no one at the front desk, and letting themselves into the room. And then, to their horror, they awake to find themselves next to a corpse!
(On the other side of town, a deserted gas station awaits travelers, with the same brand of graffiti painted on the sides of the buildings. Baker has clearly seen better days.)
I'm one of those strange birds who prefers getting to Las Vegas by car, and with so many trips over the years, I know the road between Los Angeles to Las Vegas like the back of my hand, and all the places one can stop to refuel. Once you hit Victorville, about 90 miles from L.A., you get a rest stop every 30 minutes.
Or at least, you used to. Beyond Arne's, I noticed several other roadside shells on my January ride from L.A. to Vegas to cover the Consumer Electronics Show.
Jeremy's gas station and eatery, just up the road from Baker, unlike Arne's, was truly boarded and hard to get into. Another, a combo diner/gas station known to drivers for the "Lo-Gas, Eat" sign had a small fence around it, one that was easy for a snooper to walk right through.
For anyone driving down Route 15 and needing fuel, a huge "Lo-Gas" sign awaiting them from the side of the road was all anyone would need to signal that fuel was indeed awaiting them, but alas, from the looks of things, like Arne's, there haven't been humans in these parts for years.
But unlike Baker and its 735 residents, a photographer snapping shots of the remains of this roadside diner and gas station is totally all by himself in the desert. And that's some pretty scary stuff.
We watch TV after all, just like you do, and we could only imagine what sort of Breaking Bad stuff could potentially be happening inside the shell of these graffiti-laden buildings.
So we snapped away and quickly skedaddled our way out of there, eager to post our findings on social media, and in search of the next deserted roadside attraction. Hopefully in a more urban environment.
And for those looking for business opportunities, a listing for Arne's touts 30,000 to 50,000 daily cars driving by and a sales price of just $450,000.
