Captain CAAAVEMAAANN
Posted Sunday, June 17, 2007, 4:44 PM by Lonely Planet
How far would you go to add a few more bedrooms? For one family in Moab, Utah, an expansion of their digs involved oodles of elbow grease - and two decades of actual digging.
About 60 years ago, dusty uranium miners outnumbered slickrock mountain bikers in these legendary red rock ridges, and Albert Christensen decided that the family homestead was a tad too small. With the help of his brothers, he bore into an imposing stone face and whittled out a swinging subterranean wonder-pad. Chiselling with hand tools and setting off dynamite, he hauled out massive cartloads of sandstone, creating more than a dozen pillared and spacious rooms called Hole N'' the Rock.
After fashioning a surprisingly comfortable and climate-controlled residence, Albert didn't hibernate and kick his feet up. Not merely a caveman, he was also a Renaissance man. His attempts at taxidermy culminated in two alarmingly unhappy-looking stuffed horses, and who knows what his wife thought when he proudly arranged them in the living room. Perhaps viewing the sheer exterior as a blank canvas, he carved a pop-out memorial to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his spare time.
Now uninhabited, a whitewashed and billboard-sized marker lures visitors seeking home improvement ideas.
Beth Kohn is exploring the Southwest States researching the USA guidebook. Next stop Utah's dinosaur country.
Labels: The Americas
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1 Comments:
This kind of reminds of Coober Peedy in South Australia. Now that was a strange place. I think people in the desert have to have a certain sense of humour. Or is it that we (I mean me - city types) only find these ways of living humourous. Nah - I think Fred and Wilma could've laughed at themselves.
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