We packed the car so tight we didn’t have room for the last bag of chips. Wait, I lied. Amy the Tetris queen made room for the chips. Rear view mirrors are overrated.
Heading for the Alabama Hills… the ones in the Eastern Sierras below Mt. Whitney…. this was a roadside attraction trip, not a head-down, straight-to-the-destination trip. First stop: Randsburg Ghost Town, complete with tumbleweeds and fading wooden buildings with bull horns mounted over the doorways. A skeleton with a pink bow sat on a swing over the creek. Two mannikins in dusty Old West clothes lounged in jail, complete with bed pans and empty flasks. About 20 off-roaders dressed like storm troopers road up and down the town’s one street on bikes and dune buggies, then parked and unpacked the fluffy lap dogs from under their jackets before heading into the bbq place where a tower of smoke rose into the noon day sky.
Leaving Randsburg the mountains became jaggeder. That’s a word.
We pulled into Fossil Falls for a late lunch beside the canyons of lava formations, watching rock climbers scale the walls from below, touch the top carabiner under our feet, then disappear again. We headed out before losing the last of the daylight so we wouldn’t have to make camp in the dark.
It was getting cold already as we stopped under the 25-foot woman. Beside her was a water tower proclaiming Pearson, CA the hubcap capital of the world. I’m still suffering from the disappointment of not seeing a single hubcap. But reading the stickers people left under the tall woman’s skirt was fairly entertaining.
We set up our tents in Tuttle Creek Campground next to a large group of guys in cowboy hats drinking around a huge fire. For hours we laughed our way through a game of Cards Against Trump, exhausting our firewood while listening to the neighbors’ good music. In the morning, they offered us coffee and the rest of their firewood, since most of them would be leaving that day. Firefighters from SD County, CalFire and Dept. of Forestry, mostly family, they were on a bachelor party camping trip.
All day off trail hiking through the Alabama Hills and washes we followed GPS coordinates instead of the pathetic map and guide book we tried to use. We were actually able to find most of the famed arches and discovered our own arch in a place we dubbed Coyote Wash for the path of scat we hoped came from coyote, not mountain lion.Wendy said it was cat scat. hmmmm.
Big-eared rabbits scampered out from hiding places in the rabbit brush (aptly named). We never found the biggest arches, Whitney and Charred. Amy developed a blister hiking the whole day in her Ugg boots while I fought the urge to serenade everyone with the Hamilton show tunes. None of us ate all day, so the cheese and crackers with beer chaser back at the car put us in a coma.
We headed back to the campsite where Kevin and Rigo, the last two firefighters, invited us to share their leftovers and talk story at the fire pit. After enough beer and tequila Amy and I started peppering Kevin with musical requests from his smart speaker. Amy definitely had the better dance moves. Rigo kept us liquified and eventually Amy retreated to our campsite to retrieve the marshmallows and graham crackers. Rigo found some shish kabob skewers. When we played Apple Bottom Jeans like three times…. someone ends up waving flaming marshmallows in the air…. nearly hit the flo’…
Slow moving the next morning. ‘nuff said. We could see out the back of the car finally.
But wait there’s more. Appropriately, it being MLK Jr. Day, we stopped at Manzanar, a glaring monument to our country’s abuse of human and civil rights; the Japanese-American internment camp in the cold, barren high desert. People had taken most of the barracks when the camp was closed and used them for their homes, barns, community buildings. Places like this need to be preserved, so we can be reminded, so children can learn, so we don’t repeat.
50 miles down the road from Lone Pine, the Lemon House and accompanying motel are for sale; only $350,000. It’s like a scene from a Hitchcock movie. It looks empty. But I bet all the stolen hubcaps are somewhere in one of those rooms.
Can't wait for the next road trip.
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