Hitchhiking filmmaker makes trek on outskirts of Tahoe

By Scott Oxarart, Reno Gazette-Journal

Campo owners Mark Estee and his wife, Aly, didn’t plan on picking up a hitchhiker on May 21. But he wasn’t an ordinary stranger.

It was filmmaker John Waters with a cardboard sign that read “80-W San Francisco.”

Waters concluded his 11-day hitch hike from Baltimore to San Francisco last week, and part of his trip down Interstate 80 was a stop in Reno. Estee, who was driving to Napa, for a few days of vacation, taxied Waters about 160 miles from Truckee to Vallejo, as part of the journey Waters planned to document in his upcoming book called, “Carsick.”

“We couldn’t believe he was standing there,” Estee said. “It was crazy.”