New Year's Eve - Hitchhikers Head Back to Slab City, California

For the 4th straight year, hitchhikers will be making their way from across the USA -and even Canada- to Slab City, an off-the-grid squatters community in the deserts of Southern California, by the Salton Sea. One of the first things you see coming into this 'city' just a few miles east of Niland is Salvation Mountain, Leonard Knight's hillside creation of painted gospel messages. Past that is a sea of RVs and mostly friendly old-timers, but stick around long enough and you'll meet all kinds of travelin' folk, young and old.

Diehards stick around year-long, such as Builder Bill- creator of outdoor music venue, The Range. Here most every winter weekend you can enjoy music of the jam-band variety. Got an instrument, get up on stage and join the band!

Hitchhikers set up camp at The Tanks, next to the S.P.A.Z. crew, or at The Bunkers. Camping free out in the desert, they swap stories and share hitchhiking resources around the campfire, ambling down Main Street to talk it up with the locals or catch some music from Insane Wayne and the gang.

Planning to head out to The Slabs this year? Hitchhikers, RVers and road trippers can get directions to Slab City and Niland here. Want to see what else goes on? Check out digihitch's Slab City page, or Slab City on MySpace. Other pages with photos and info include www.desertdutch.org and www.slabcity.org

Let us know you're coming! Visit the official New Year Hitchhiker Happening homepage with details and discussions.

Thumbs Up Australia - Hitchhiking the Outback

Author Tom Parry contacted us a few weeks ago about promoting his new book, Thumbs Up Australia - Hitchhiking the Outback and sent us a few copies to give away to our digihitch members. It's a good read about a British bloke and his French girlfriend who wing it down under for a season, meeting the locals and tramping through Outback towns that most people just breeze by in busses.

With all the winter travelers heading south, we decided to do a southbound for the winter theme on the digihitch frontpage, with special listings of all the places lo-budget travelers go, including Mexico, Southwest USA, Southeast Asia and, of course- Australia. Parry also offered up a Australia hitchhiking description for our pages.

We added some winter travel book recommendations in our digihitch aStore - check em out!

Look for more word about the giveaway on digihitch this week. We also have hitchhiking books by Irv Thomas, Kinga Freespirit and Joe Mack to gift to a few lucky travelers. You may not be able to pack em all for the road, but they're good off-road reading.

Bass Drum Ben - hitchhiker bottoms up in newspaper

World hitchhiker and digihitch featured writer Bass Drum Ben appears this week in the Antarctic Sun newspaper. Ben has been down on the ice in Antarctica since late September, working his 2nd 'summer season' (winter for us northerners) at McMurdo Station.

Ben's goal to hitchhike all 7 continents before the age of 30 is no secret. He'll accomplish his quest this summer when he hitchhikes through South America. Another mile marker is an upcoming documentary film featuring Ben (due Spring 2007- more info from digihitch.com soon). Filmed in August and September 2006, Ben hitchhiked from North Carolina to the Grand Canyon in Arizona in his day-glo yellow hitchhiking suit. Morgan 'Salman', digihitch editor, was along for the ride as a film crew member and had a few kudos to give Ben in the Antarctic Sun article written by Peter Rejcek.

Stay tuned to digihitch.com for more adventures from Bass Drum Ben. Join his mailing list for regular updates and photos, and read his hitchhiker bio here for travel info along with book, music and movie recommendations.

For the Antarctic Sun article featuring Bass Drum Ben, download the Oct. 29th issue here by clicking the newspaper link in the top right corner and turn to page 12.

Good going, Ben! See you topside next year!