The road is grated to Means Dry Lake; just east of the small town of Lucerne, Califonia. Means is about two hours North East from Los Angeles. As always it is another early call time for me. I have a small caravan of vehicles behind me. The road is rough in places and I drive slowly, avoiding the ruts in the road. After about 30 minutes on the dirt road, we make our way onto the lakebed. In a 4 X 4 vehicle you can make it to the lake in less than 10 minutes going about 60. Since Southern Califonia earlier this summer had monsoon rains, the middle of the lake is a little muddy, but the outer edges are dry. The production decided to base camp on the westerrn shore of the lake. In the summer, very few people use Means Dry Lake because of the heat. For filming this is not a bad predicament, especially if your production needs privacy. Week days are probably the best days to film at the lake, weekends, even in summer, day campers do come to Means.
Even though it was hot, since Means is in the high desert, the tempertatures never exceeded a hundred degrees, during our three day stay at Means. We set up base camp so that the RVs created a circle, leaving a small opening for the ATVs and side by side to navigate and not to be seen by the public. This is typical when you are filming unreleased vehicles, you want to create a sancturary so that preying eyes don't get a first look and pictures of such vehicles. Since my RV has a large awning, I was able to create much needed shade for the crew.
What makes Means Dry Lakebed such an awesome location for filming is that there is plenty of room to max out the speed on almost any given vehicle one might film. You can film from any direction without seeing a highway. There are zero structures to get in the way of a shot. The topagraphy is amazing from a flat lakebed to rugged mountains or just plan open desert, with Joshua Trees and dry brush darting out from the landscape. You are only 30 minutes from the town of Yucca, off of highway 62. Yucca has a Walmart, two Stater Brothers, numerous restaurants and plenty of places to lodge your crew. We stayed at the Best Western 760.365.3555, the accommodations were fine, plenty of parking for our large vehicles and they had a complementary breakfast. About 15 minutes away from Means Dry Lake is the town of Landers off of highway 247 or Old Woman Springs Road, there is a convenient store with a gas station. I had to make numerous trips to get fuel for our portable generators and ice.
We had an excellent craft service person who took care of the crew. She made sure everyone was hydrated. Yolanda made these amazing healthy smoothies, coffee flowed all morning. Yolanda had a wonderful crafty table with healthy snacks that she personalized with her baskets and personal touches. Since it was hot, she set up the table inside my motor home. My motor home the "Ambassador" has four slide-outs and is forty feet long. It is set up to handle a wide variety of jobs. It has a large four door refrigerator/freezer with plenty of storage space to store dry goods. I have Wi-Fi, steamer, built in racks, make-up tables and more. On larger jobs I rent a 2 room VIP restrooms or the Pusher porta potty with AC to keep people cool while they do their bussiness provided by Terrence Martin 310 663 1998. Whatever your needs are I have a motorhome for the job. If you have any questions about this location or other locations, please call me I would love to help you Michael Green 818 317 7099.
