MichelleTo start, I stayed in Bakersfield, CA for 4 nights since I needed to do laundry and get groceries, cat stuff, etc. One thing I know is that Bakersfield will never be called ‘home’ for me. Lots of smog and not very pretty. Good thing I didn’t stay long!
I drove from Bakersfield to Lone Pine, CA, with a brief stop at the Fossil Falls area where I thought I would stay a few days. I wasn’t too taken with the area and there was mud and sand deep enough to get stuck in, so I decided to continue to Lone Pine which was the next stop on my itinerary.
Lone Pine is on the Eastern side of the Sierra mountains. It’s a very small town big with fame for all the old Westerns (and some non-Westerns) that were filmed in the Alabama Hills just west of town. The Film History Museum in town chronicles many of the actors that frequented the Alabama Hills while filming movies there. A very small but worthwhile museum. Tons of memorabilia is packed into this museum. Over 400 movies have been filmed in the Alabama Hills and Lone Pine since 1920 when movies were silent. Did you know that John Wayne made 154 movies in his career? That’s when they pumped out movies like crazy. Incredible!
The Alabama Hills is made up of a flat valley covered in sage type bushes with huge boulder outcroppings throughout the valley. Some of these outcroppings are like mountains being 2000 ft above the valley floor. The various rock formations are incredible to drive and walk through while visiting the areas where movies were filmed, like Gunga Din, How The West Was Won, Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, High Sierra and more modern movies like Star Trek Generations, Iron Man, Tremors, Yellow Sky, and Django Unchained. The unusual shapes of the rocks have been formed through weather erosion (wind, rain, etc). Some rocks have shallow caves or holes in them, or are odd shapes. Behind these massive rock outcroppings are the towering Eastern Sierra Nevadas with the highest peak being Mt Whitney at 14,505 ft. Mt Whitney is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. In January the mountains have snow which contrasts sharply with the gray and red rocks in front. I can only say that this area is breathtaking especially at Sunrise! There is still free camping in the hills, and I had a front and center view of Mt Whitney and Lone Pine Peak… and the rest of the Sierra range. On the East side of the valley and town are the Inyo Mountains. They had very little snow on them either because they aren’t as tall or because the rain and snow gets dumped on the Sierra Nevada’s with nothing left over for the Inyo’s. Therefore, the Inyo Mountains were completely bare and stark. A huge contrast to the opposite side of the valley.
I stayed 5 nights and the weather was clear and sunny each day. Only one day reached 60 degrees and it was in the low 30s at night. The temperature has much to do with the wind. My 2nd night there was a high wind advisory which kept waking me up all night long (the wind not the advisory 😊). It was pounding the poor RV which shuddered and rocked (but didn’t fall down!). The day it reached 60 was beautiful with only a light breeze. Perfect for hiking, which I did. The Arch Loop Trail wasn’t very long, maybe a mile, but with all the exploration along the way it ended up being over 2 miles when I was done. The trail went up and down and all around, in between and across huge boulders. The main reason for this hike was to see Mobius Arch. It was fun taking pictures using the Arch as a frame for distant scenery. There was another arch in the making, the Eye of Alabama. It was rather small, but I wonder what a couple hundred years of weather will make of it.
The high winds here made it difficult to get out and explore on foot. Too cold and the gusts were so strong I could hardly stand up against them. I did a lot of touring by car, and this is a really fun place to do that. There are dirt roads ‘everywhere’. Probably 75% of them can be accessed with a non-4WD car, and about 25% were 4WD Technical roads. Having a small car paid off in this case because some of the roads wind between rocks and are just a bit wider than my car. You could drive these roads all day and feel like a true western outlaw (sans the horse). The main road meandered higher up over the taller hills and provided a spectacular long view of the Sierra range. It took my breath away! I had intended to stay much longer than 5 days in the Alabama Hills, but the mighty winds and cold nights were going to get much worse. Nighttime temps were going down into the 20’s and it gets very hard to keep the RV warm. I can if I have an endless supply of electricity and propane, which I don’t. That temp pattern was to stick around for well over a week, so I made the decision to move on to Death Valley National Park where it was forecast to be much warmer. I’m looking forward to finding out if it’s true!
