We left relatively early on Sunday morning. Traffic was light, and we were out of Los Angeles pretty quickly. It seemed like the dogs would probably like a chance to walk about a bit before we started the long haul to Inyo County, so we stopped off at Placerita Canyon Nature Center near Santa Clarita. Placerita Canyon was the site of the first discovery of gold in California, two years or so before James Marshall made his much more important find on the south fork of the American River.
We didn’t spend that much time here, but the dogs did get the chance to get their paws wet in the water.
There are a number of striking rock formations in this part of Southern California. Vasquez Rocks is probably the best known, but the striking Red Rock area is just off Highway 14 makes for easy and striking photographs.
We continued driving north through the Mojave Desert and on to the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. We drove past Owens Lake, but we could not resist stopping by an odd little motel just south of Lone Pine. It featured one very unusual cottage.
The cacti were great, but the T-Rex was even better.
The principal attraction of Lone Pine, besides the trailhead to Mount Whitney, is the Alabama Hills. Named by southern sympathizers for the crew of the CSS Alabama, sunk by the Union Navy in 1864, the Alabama Hills have the been site of over 300 movies. Most were westerns, but the Alabama Hills have also been used as the foothills of the Himalayas in movies like Gunga Din.
It is a pleasant surprise that there is little trash or graffiti in the Alabama Hills. Yet the one exception to this rule proved to be somewhat charming (even if I completely disapproved of it).
As we drove through this area, which is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, we could see some cattle still grazing among the sage in the open range. It was hard to keep Edie from playing with these “big dogs.”
We went back town to take a naps, and then we returned to the Hills as the sun was beginning to set. The light was particularly nice for nature shots. And, since it has been a rainy and snowy winter, there was lots of nature to shoot.
We had dinner at a little place on the main street of town. Despite the circus theme, it was actually a Chinese restaurant. It would not be considered particularly great Chinese food anywhere in San Francisco or the San Gabriel Valley, but for Inyo County it was not that bad.
We finished the evening in not-very-hot hot tub at the Dow Villa motel.
