Lone Pine, CA

This is our last post of adventures that occurred before we needed to shelter in place due to C-19. In our last post we were at Death Valley.  After a short stay there, we headed west along Route 190 towards the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada’s. The 100 mile trip was a scenic and relaxing drive through Death Valley National Park. Well, it was until we reached Panamint Springs then it literally turned into a cliff hanger! Ooh wee! It was a very windy road with vast overlooks and very few guard rails. It was a real white knuckle drive and I was quite relieved when it was over. I was very grateful for Larry’s steady hand at the wheel.

Lone Pine is situated in the Owens Valley and is just east of the Alabama Hills. The area is notable for its stupendous scenery and for the movies and TV shows filmed here including Hop Along Cassidy, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Hell Bent for Leather.

The Alabama Hills is a stunning array of round rock formations. We had a great hike there and were astounded by its beauty. Of course, it wasn’t a hard sell.

Me + big sky + rocks = Bliss!!!

We parked Shiny for two nights at Boulder Creek RV Resort which was clean and the folks were friendly. Then we headed to Tuttle Creek Campground. It is a part of the Bureau of Land Management and at $2.50 a night with our Geezer Pass it was quite a bargain. To say it was beautiful would be an understatement. We pretty much had the place to ourselves and really enjoyed the majestic scenery, nice hikes, varied vegetation and streams stocked with rainbow trout. I will say that it was VERY windy there.

We had a treat when our niece Emily, her two daughters and Em’s friend visited us for the afternoon.  We went for a nice walk about and then the women folk went inside to get out of the wind. The girls made beautiful get well cards for my dad, their great grandfather. You could tell they were trying to figure out the concept that their grandfather, my brother Patrick, actually had a father! We had to cancel our plans for a weenie and marshmallow  roast because of the wind and went out for pizza instead. Little did we realize that it would be our last time out for a long time.

On our last day in Lone Pine, we went to Manzanar National Historic Site. I suggest you click on this link to read more about this internment camp. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which authorized the military to remove everyone of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. The camp at Manzanar confined over 10,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese Immigrants. The camp remained opened until shortly after the end of the war on November 21, 1945. It wasn’t until the 1980’s and President George W. Bush’s presidency that a congressionally authorized commission concluded that, “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership” led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Needless to say, this was a very moving experience and a reminder to be ever mindful of  the rights of everyone.

While at the historic site, we had our first experience with social distancing. We thought that the duct tape placed on the floor of the visitors center  at 6 foot intervals was kind of silly. Little did we realize that it would become our new normal. We left Lone Pine abruptly and headed back to Sierra Vista, AZ as we kept hearing about parks and campgrounds closing and about the spread of this new virus.

We sure hope we can come back to this area again and spend a little more time there.