Hello Everyone!
Greetings from Gardnerville, Nevada! I have popped out of California for a few minutes on my way through the Carson Valley and am overjoyed to see gas prices that start with a 3 instead of a 4 or 5 which is the hardest part about traveling in California. It’s a bit gloomy out today and the temperature is hovering just above freezing, so it’s a perfect day to hunker down and get this post written. It’s been a wonderful week out here on the road, slowly making my way up California 395 on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I’ve driven this road dozens of times between Yosemite and Las Vegas or Death Valley, but I have usually had to make it all the way between the two in a day which doesn’t leave much time for exploring. Being able to stop off and see the sights and do some hiking and take my time is what this trip is all about and I’ve definitely enjoyed doing just that this week. In the beginning of the week, it was pretty hot out during the day, but the nights were cool and pleasant and seeing snowy mountains out my driver’s side window was been amazing. Towards the end of the week I made my way into those mountains and even saw some snow.
I left you last week in Ridgecrest, a nice little military support community near the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. After I finished this post, I ran across the street to the little Maturango Museum which had a small but wonderful collection of local artifacts. They highlighted the plentiful petroglyphs (ancient rock carvings) in the area as well as the natural history of the local desert environment. The museum had some wonderful photos on display, both recent ones from a National Geographic bird photography competition and some great old ones from the area which had been taken by naval photographers practicing for their official duties in the local community. Perhaps best of all, the museum also served as the local visitor’s center and the ladies there gave me some wonderful ideas for my trip north. When they closed up for the day I went across the street to a very nice park where I cooked up some dinner and read my book before calling it an early night.
Wednesday morning I was up and off nice and early and made my first stop at Fossil Falls. This small recreational site is in the shadow of an ancient cinder cone and there is plentiful evidence of the area’s volcanic past. During the last ice age, the snowmelt fed into a river and that river ran over Fossil Falls. There hasn’t been any water there in a very long time, but you can still see where the water flowed over the rock on its downhill trajectory. From Fossil Falls I headed on to Lone Pine and stopped in at the Museum of Western Film History on the edge of town. The nearby Alabama Hills have served as the setting for over a hundred movies in the last hundred years, with their wonderfully textured western landscape and the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While most of these films were made before my time, names like The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy were certainly familiar to me. In more modern times Tremors and Django Unchained were filmed in the area…