August 12, 2015 Alabama Hills in Lone Pine

My humans took me outside today and let me roll and sniff.  But they did NOT let me catch a lizard or a bird.  What's up with that?

 

After some rather gusty winds yesterday, it calmed at night.  The temperature cooled off a bit and the stars put on quite a show.

 

After enjoying our morning coffee outside with Rudy, we packed a small lunch and headed into the Alabama Hills.  Once we turn on to Movie Road (named after all the movies that have been made in the area), the pavement turns into dirt.   Many of the rock formations have names, and it is easy to see why.  Face Rock has a face painted on it.  We saw rocks we would name ET rock, elephant rock, crouching lion, gnawing rat, etc.  We also saw some of the arches in the area.  I chose to forgo my morning walk in favor of doing a hike to Whitney Portal Arch.    It is about a mile and a half of walking through the monoliths and arches with Mount Whitney in the background.  It is really quite stunning.  We chose to take a few of the 4WD trails around.  IT was unbelievable that there were no off roaders as this was a paradise for a dirt bike and such.  It would be very easy to spend a few days going through all the trails in the area.  But we chose to head up to Whitney Portal.

 

The road is not for someone that is afraid of heights, or for someone who fidgets when he drives...  It climbs a few thousand feet, no guardrails to speak of.  But there are spectacular views of the valley below.  The Alabama Hills look like pebbles from here.  The road ends at the trail head for the hike to Mount Whitney.  There are campgrounds and picnic areas.  There are beautiful waterfalls.  The granite of the mountains and the wooded terrain make for some nice eye candy.  We see fish swimming in a pond - we don't have fishing poles.  Arghhhhh.  Spouse has to talk to every trekker in sight.  Spouse made the trek about 45 years ago so this was a bit of a homecoming.  We both got  a chuckle out of some of the gear people were carrying.  Two guys weighed their packs, one was 47, one 59 pounds.  Gee guys, there are lighter sleeping bags out there, and smaller too!  Oh well, it's their bodies!

 

We checked out the campgrounds.  Hannah would not fit up here.  Tents barely fit!  We then wound our way back to Hannah, and the gusty, GUSTY winds!  Did I mention it was WINDY????

 

I still cannot get pictures to load.  Not sure if it is security (nothing has changed so that would be weird).  It may be the wi-fi here.  We often find RV parks do things to limit streaming and picture type stuff because they dog the response time.  I am working on it.  When I figure it out, I will go back and repost the blogs with the pictures.