8mm Vintage Road Trip Movie Clips

[Keep the Show on the Road!]

Blame the “youngins” for this…movie clips of road scenes and tourist spots from my 1960’s home movies. They are mercifully short (under 90 seconds), the result of heavy editing. Assuming you have windows media player and a high speed connection, a double click on the link will bring up the movie…after time to buffer it. These should view at full screen, if you wish. These are big files.

 

These were taken on regular 8mm movie film in 1962 and 1963.

 

Sonora Pass, California. September 1963. Pass over the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1963 you could pull off the road on the pass and camp out virtually anywhere. One reason why unregulated camping is off limits today is seen as we put out the campfire with an ax! I haven’t been over the pass in 40 years, but I imagine it is at least a two lane road now, complete with white lines.

 

Knight’s Ferry, California Covered Bridge and General Store, 1962. Mobilene tells us that the bridge has been closed to auto traffic for 26 years. Kind of sad. The web tells me that this is now the oldest general store in California. Beats me. It was just a little town on the way on a 1962 trip with my Dad over Sonora Pass.

 

Virginia City, Nevada, 1962. This is before Virginia City was restored. It was already a tourist destination, but there was little to no restoration yet.

 

June Lake, California, 1963. Just off the El Camino Sierra (US395) This is a small resort town on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. Roadhound probably knows the place. Includes the road in, lake, downtown, café (diner for you Midwesterners), cars, etc

 

More to come from the archives.

 

Keep the Show on the Road!

[DennyG]

Very cool! That opening drive-by in the Sonora clip is a really nice "professional" touch. That doesn't appear to be a campfire that's being attacked by the ax, unless, of course, you built your campfires inside hollow trees. If that's the case, the film shows two reasons that camping is now off limits.

 

Thanks.

[Alex Burr - hester_nec]

I'm ready for my close up Mr. DeMillle!!!! LOL What a great memory - an era gone by.

You can have old home movies like that restored, you know. And put on DVD's. Thanks for sharing - looking fwd to more, later.

 

Hudsonly,

Alex Burr

Memphis, TN

[mobilene]

Sweetness!

 

Not sure why, but these took for bloody ever to download here. So I sat in extreme antici......pation. But that just heightened the enoyment once they arrived!

 

I especially liked seeing all the shots of the '57 Ford in the Sonora Pass video. My dad had a '57 Ford at about the same time

 

jim.

[BabyBoomerBob]

Wonderful stuff! Thanks for sharing! I found the clip of the old covered bridge quite poignant since it's no longer open, but I feel privileged to have seen what it was like riding through it.

 

I've got a mess of videotape of travels between 1991 and 2001 that I edited and put on standard VHS tape. Then I bought a combo VCR and DVD burner/player and burned the tapes to DVD. Unfortunately, it's DVD-RW which my computer doesn't recognize:( Otherwise, I'd have a whole raft of goodies from then on Webshots by now.

[Keep the Show on the Road!]

Wonderful stuff! Thanks for sharing! I found the clip of the old covered bridge quite poignant since it's no longer open, but I feel privileged to have seen what it was like riding through it.

 

I've got a mess of videotape of travels between 1991 and 2001 that I edited and put on standard VHS tape. Then I bought a combo VCR and DVD burner/player and burned the tapes to DVD. Unfortunately, it's DVD-RW which my computer doesn't recognize:( Otherwise, I'd have a whole raft of goodies from then on Webshots by now.

 

Thanks for the comments! They really please me.

 

Frankly these old movies sit in the basement and mold, and have for most of the time since I made them. I haven’t been able to bring myself to toss them out.....but my family of the last 30 years doesn’t plead to see what I was doing 40 or more years ago.

 

99% of the footage is uninteresting, but occasionally I did take a shot that has some value for a roadie. I’ll toss up a few more as time permits.

 

I suppose your choice of DVD-RW was a choice, not a requirement, of your VCR to DVD recorder. I have a stand alone DVD recorder and I use DVD-R (not DVD+R or DVD-RW) disks as they seem to have the greatest compatibility. Video is often annoying!

 

Is there such a thing as “closing” a DVD-RW on your recorder? It seems to me that I recall that I could end a recording session, take out the disk, try to play it in my computer’s CD-DVD drive, and get nothing....unless I “closed” the disk in the recorder. Fortunately, I was able to “close” the disk by reinserting it in the recorder and following the menu. Maybe you can too.

 

Anyway, thanks again for the comments!

 

Keep the Show on the Road! Dave

[Chris Rowland]

Virginia City, Nevada, 1962. This is before Virginia City was restored. It was already a tourist destination, but there was little to no restoration yet.

I especially enjoyed the Virginia City footage--I stopped by there twice in the past five years on business trips to Reno. I remember going into the "Totem Trading Post" and walking up the boardwalk sidewalks that are shown in the clip. I loved taking Nevada-341 over the mountain from Reno.

 

Chris