Western Adventure 2014: Stop 4: Lone Pine, CA

Our first afternoon in Lone Pine ended up being a trailer repair afternoon.

It was pretty windy our last night in Death Valley so Kristen sat outside facing toward the trailer so that her hair stayed out of her face. With that change in perspective, she noticed that the trailer's gas line was hanging down and sitting on top of the brake. A neighbor lent me a zip tie that I used to temporarily tie the gas line up out of the way (I now have a package of 18" zip ties in my tool/repair kit).

Once we were settled in Lone Pine I went looking for a more permanent solution. A series of plastic clips is supposed to tie the gas line to the trailer's steel floor joists (the joists have holes through them for exactly this purpose). 2 of the clips were broken. I found a couple of large hose clamps that I secured through holes in the joists and around the gas line. With the hose clamps fully tightened, the gas line is now more snugly secured than ever..

As long as I was under the trailer, I checked everything else out and found that one of the wires to the electric trailer brakes was very badly damaged. I wasn't even sure that it was still functioning so we plugged the trailer into the back of the truck and listened to each brake while the brakes were being applied. All were working so the damage was restricted to the insulation.. I wrapped the damaged area tightly with electrical tape and called it fixed.

This park is in a beautiful location, a couple of miles below town with Owens Lake just to the East and Mount Whitney to the West. Our first evening here, we had some light rain (big drops - just no a lot of them) accompanied by some very impressive lighting and thunder.

Mount Whitney from the Park

Owens Lake (in the distance) from the edge of the Park.

Another shot of Mount Whitney from the Park.

Our first destination when we took off to explore the area was the Alabama Hills. The hills, named after a Civil War battleship, were formed when an 1872 earthquake destroyed Lone Pine and shoved the hills up where there had been no hills previously. The hills are so dramatic in appearance that, over the years, they have been used as a filming location hundreds of movies and television shows.

Part of what they call "Lone Ranger Canyon".

Charge of the Light Brigade location.

More Charge of the Light Brigade location,

Our next stop was the local Film History Museum. Most of the exhibits there relate to films that were shot locally.

Kristen really liked this fancy saddle and insisted that I keep it in, even though it is badly out of focus.

Fancy movie guns - the long gun was used by John Wayne in several movies, including The Alamo.

Bogie's car in his first major film, High Sierra. I've seen that film and I'm sure that it never looked as good as it does now.

Next, we drove up to Independence to see the Mt. Whitney fish hatchery. Nobody told us that it had closed in 1996. A fish hatchery with fish would have been much more interesting.

Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery.

They did have some fairly large trout in the lake.

Our final stop for the day was at the Manzanar internment camp. This is where up to 10,000 Japanese Americans were crowded into 500 acres of barracks during World War II. Most of the original structures are gone. A tower, 2 barracks and a dining hall have been recreated and there's a very large and informative visitors center.

Looking from the visitors center out at the dining hall.

The first barrack that you visit is intended to demonstrate what the barracks looked like when the internees first arrived.

The second barracks shows what they looked like after the internees had a chance to make improvements (other than the drywall and ceiling, we didn't notice a lot of difference)