Topic: Road Trip - Lone Pine, CA - May 2018

[FrankB]

This . . .



and this . . .



. . . can only mean one thing . . . it's time for a little road trip.  Heather and I spent three nights in Lone Pine last week.  We stayed the Dow Villa Motel and just wandered around the area.  Like most of our trips, we had a whole bunch of stuff that we planned to see and do while there; and then, like most of our trips, because of weather, timing (and stock Xterra suspension), we ended not doing much of what we planned, and found a whole bunch of other fun stuff instead.  It's a good thing that I view a plan as nothing more than a baseline from which changes will inevitably be made.

Our first stop was the Rio Tinto US Borax Mine outside of Boron.  They have a nice visitor center, it is worth a stop.



They had a sign in front of the big truck saying it was a "selfie station" so I took a selfie.  It was really windy out there.



We stopped briefly at the old "Club Fed" just north of Kramer Junction, but despite the complete lack of warning signage, it apparently is still off limits, and we were asked to leave.  Needless to say, we complied immediately.



Our next stop was Fossil Falls, which has some pretty cool geology.  It too is worth a stop to see the remains of this volcanically active area.







More to follow.

[FrankB]

Our first stop on Tuesday morning was the Alabama Hills.  Ordinarily the view through this arch would be more or less of Mt. Whitney.  While we were there it was mostly a view of clouds.



The tops of the Sierras and the Inyo Mountains were both in the clouds most of the time.  Here's a shot with the Xterra in it.



There are some great rock formations in the Alabama Hills.









We took the back way out of the Alabama Hills, using Hogback Road to connect back up to Whitney Portal Road further up the hill, and then continued on up to the end at Whitney Portal.



There was a bit of snow when we got to the top of the road.



More to follow.

[Celt]

When you were in the Alabama Hills did you by chance run into Burt Gummer?

[FrankB]

When you were in the Alabama Hills did you by chance run into Burt Gummer?

No, but we did drive over to the spot where they filmed a good portion of the movie.  We also stopped into the Film Museum, and saw an actual real Graboid.



They also have a good video running in that part of the museum about the making of what is one of my all-time favorite movies.

[FrankB]

We wandered around Whitney Portal for a bit, but it was getting cold so we didn't stay too long.





The views from the road on the way down were nice.









We stopped in at the Film Museum, which is a great place.



The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power has a dust mitigation and restoration (of sorts) program going that includes places where you drive out on the raised roadbeds that go out into the playa of Owens Lake.  On Tuesday late in the day we drove out to the migratory bird observation spot that is accessed from alongside the RV park just a little south of Hwy 136 on Hwy 395.  It was really windy and sprinkling but still cool to see.  There is still a lot of mining activity on the lakebed, and you pass by a fair amount of equipment along the way.  The Interagency Visitor Center has information, including maps, to the spots you can access.







At the end of the day we found this parked by our room at the Dow Villa Motel.  It had Idaho plates.



More to follow.

[FrankB]

The weather was much nicer when we got up on Wednesday morning. 



We started out with a great breakfast at the Alabama Hills Cafe, walking distance from the hotel, then headed north on 395. Our first stop was Manzanar.





The last time I was here the auto tour road around the camp was graded dirt.  They paved it just a couple of weeks ago. 







Next stop was the old Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery, at the north end of Independence.  The museum is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but that's okay, we just wanted to see the building with the mountains in the background.





On our way back south Heather thought that Onion Valley Road looked like it might make an interesting detour.  It winds its way up to the Kearsarge Pass Trailhead at 9,200', so we thought it might be a fun drive - it was.  It was also cold and gray at the top, and starting to snow a bit.





Which way? Who cares? Either way should be fun.



Coming back south we turned onto Moffat Ranch Road and connected to Movie Road for another wander in the Alabama Hills.  Unlike the Alabama Hills, there is a fair bit of vegetation along Moffat Ranch and in a few places it follows a stream.



We finally got to see the Sierras without a lot of cloud cover, so we decided to go back up to Whitney Portal to see the waterfall we missed the day before.



More to follow.

[FrankB]

It turns out the waterfall wasn't all that spectacular to see, but it was nice to be up in the pine trees for something different from San Diego scenery.





We spent some time visiting with the guy who runs the little store at Whitney Portal, and then headed back down towards Lone Pine, with another stop in the Alabama Hills to hike out to an arch we spotted the day before.











We ended the day with a very good Chinese meal at the Merry Go Round Restaurant, followed by an early evening walk around town.

More to follow.

[Jayrat]

Awesome trip report as always Frank , thanks for sharing ,
looks like a very peaceful trip

[FrankB]

Our plan for Thursday was to head out on Hwy 136 towards Death Valley, then turn south at Panamint Springs and pass by Trona Pinnacles before getting back onto US 395 for the drive home. 

On our way out of the Alabama Hills Cafe after breakfast we spotted the Moon setting over the Sierras.



Our first stop after leaving Lone Pine was the DWP access spot to Owens Lake outside of Keeler.  Much better views than part we saw on Tuesday afternoon.





The next planned stop was to be the Father Crowley Scenic Overlook in Death Valley.  We had no intention of staying very long, but I've always been a firm believer in stopping at every scenic overlook just to see what's there.

For many years I've been wanting to go to the canyon in Death Valley known as "Star Wars Canyon" to get pictures of the fighter planes flying below the rim of the canyon.  For some reason I always thought that the spot was not very accessible.  I was wrong.

So, there I am at "Star Wars Canyon" when almost right away a pair of German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons come screaming by, and I've still got a wide angle lens on the camera.  For those of you who know cameras, I had a 10-24mm zoom on a crop-sensor (APS-C) camera.  To make things even worse, I had left the Nikon with the big lens (that is perfect for this sort of thing) at home, and the camera was a mirrorless one, which suck for tracking moving objects.  For those of you who don't know cameras or don't understand those last two sentences - think of the saying "You don't bring a knife to a gunfight".  Anyway, none of that was going to stop me from taking a few pictures.







A few of the aviation nerds/enthusiasts that were hanging out there had air traffic control scanners, and when I heard that there were a pair of F/A-18s in the area and headed south, I switched over to my 55-200mm zoom and waited. A while. So much for the "5-minute stop" thing.  Then things got weird again, in a way that at least the photography enthusiasts reading this will understand. When I use my Nikon at the zoo and other places to track moving animals and birds, or at air shows, I'm using a fixed-length lens, not a zoom.  I do that quite often, so it's kind of second nature to track a moving object with the camera.  So, there I am at "Star Wars Canyon", at least with what should be a somewhat more appropriate lens, when the the F/A-18's show up.  And I get so excited seeing them that I revert back to "muscle memory" and completely forget that I can zoom the damn lens.  It was set at its widest setting, and that is where it stayed.  At least I could crop a bit for web display without losing too much resolution.







These guys were loaded for bear.  It was a blast to watch.  When the weather cools off again this fall I plan to make a trip out there just to spend a whole day there . . . with the right camera too.

All in all we had a great trip.  We never did get to Bristlecone Pines or the hike to Mt. Whitney Lake due to the weather.  We got threatened with "calling the cops" at Club Fed.  We decided not drive the steep road up to Cerro Gordo after all, because the rear axle of the X spent the entire trip squashed up against the Timbren bump stops, and I wasn't sure how they would react to long steep climbs.  A call to Greg at PRG may be in my near future.  We did find some really good restaurants in Lone Pine, which I wasn't expecting.  The Merry Go Round, Seasons, and the Alabama Hills Cafe are all places I can recommend.

[Celt]

No, but we did drive over to the spot where they filmed a good portion of the movie.  We also stopped into the Film Museum, and saw an actual real Graboid.



They also have a good video running in that part of the museum about the making of what is one of my all-time favorite movies.

 That's awesome! If I have any time when we get into Lone Pine I will have to try and check that museum out. The pics you took were really great, I love that part of the world. In my opinion it can be one of the most beautiful and diverse in America. From the highest point in the contiguous united states to the lowest all within a very short distance of each other. That fish hatchery scenery looks like anything I would have seen from my time in Bavaria around Garmisch-Partenkirchen or Berchtesgaden. Remind me to tell you my FA-18 story at a food truck meet up.

[CAWoody]

Seeing all that snow makes me wonder what it's going to be like Memorial Day weekend when we do Cerro Gordo. 

[SCUBA_Dale]

That would be awesome!!!

Seeing all that snow makes me wonder what it's going to be like Memorial Day weekend when we do Cerro Gordo. 

Sent from my Samsung Note 8 using Tapatalk

[Celt]

That would be awesome!!!
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  Agreed, I could definitely go for some snow!

[Sage Bromax]

Snow will help keep the beer cold!

[JFanaselle]

Awesome trip report Frank! That river/stream along Moffat Ranch Road was flowing pretty intense when the wife and I were up there last year (Memorial Day weekend). We found a spot to cross it and it was at least 2 feet deep.

I think my favorite photo that you posted is the second shot of the Onion Valley Road. I love what you did with the depth of field and how you used the shadows to give it even more depth, and I really like how the road is going a completely different direction in the foreground but you can still tell it's the same road by the distinguished surface. Super cool shot!

I'd be all for a visit to Star Wars Canyon with you later this year. I have a couple of buddies that are VERY into it. They get out there a couple of times a year. They are military aviation buffs, and know everything about everything when it comes to military planes. They, too, bring scanners and monitor the air traffic. I do, however, enjoy the shots you managed to get, even with the wrong equipment in your hands at the time.

Great stuff! Did you happen to check out the old abandoned airport across 395 from Manzanar? It's nothing more than a bunch of old runways, but it was fun to pretend I was an airplane trying to take off and getting some speed on them.