FISHING THE EASTERN SIERRA MAY 2012

Mmmmm... trout. That's what we fish for here in the Sierra Nevada, and we like it: the fishing, the camping, the cooking, the eating. Though we reserved all of our catch for our freezer back home on this trip, we spent a weekend exploring creeks and the Owens River for future fishing forays. We've never been to the east side so early in the season and the campgrounds were very quiet. Our original camping goal was Big Springs, one of a series of free campgrounds maintained by the Forest Service between June Lake and Mammoth Lakes just off Hwy 395. Big Springs had not opened for the season, so we ended up camping at Glass Creek (also free), where Fleabag had plenty of room to roam and bump into things without ending up in someone else's campsite. The spring days at 7000 feet were spectacularly sunny and warm, but the nights were still a bit chilly. I woke to find Fleabag's water bowl had frozen overnight. After a morning campfire and a hearty camp breakfast we fished in the creek some 50 yards from our campsite that had been stocked with trout just three days before.

Glass Creek Campground

Glass Creek

Not much sport in the fishing of stocked trout, Ted says, so we took off in the afternoon to look for other possibilities. We stopped by Deadman Creek at the Big Springs campground and drove along the Owens River Road on our way to Hot Creek. You can surmise that Hot Creek is, well, hot, and near the source of geologic thermal activity. The road passes over the creek a few times and when we stopped on a bridge to snap photos of the undulating water plants in the flowing creek, a flock of swallows emerged from under the bridge in a huff as a formation of pelicans flew overhead. Hot Creek Geologic Site is maintained by the Forest Service with two hot springs pools that feed the creek. Just like the hot springs in Yellowstone, the pools are a fantastic milky blue. The creek abounds with plant life, and swimming is no longer allowed at the site due to temperature fluctuations in the hot springs. After a picnic lunch at the truck we strolled down the walkway to view the pools where Ted really yearned for a swim. On the walk down I noticed an unfamiliar shrub covered with showy pink flowers and buzzing bees. This turned out to be Desert Peach, which only blooms in early spring. Since I never make it over Tioga Pass before summer, there was indeed something new under the sun for me that day.

Deadman Creek

Hot CreekHot Creek Geologic Site

Down the road from the geologic site you can visit the Hot Creek Fish Hatchery, one of three hatcheries in the Eastern Sierra responsible for raising and stocking trout in the region. There are twenty-one fish hatcheries in California, and only half raise trout. The other hatcheries raise salmon and steelhead. This hatchery has outside ponds where you can take a gander at the monster trout and the seagulls all waiting around for a bite.

After the tour, we made a stop at the June Lake Junction store and gas station for ice, just about five miles down Hwy 395 from the Glass Creek campground. The campground itself is just off the highway, and though we could hear traffic from the road, 395 is not a terribly busy road and we found convenient access to ice important at this dry campground. We then convalesced at camp before some late afternoon fishing in Glass Creek to augment our stockpile. Our camp cooking style this trip utilized our new dutch oven, where we cooked up some marinated tri-tip over the fire. In the late evening we had two owls hooting around the campground and coyotes howling off in the distance.

Our dutch oven - the Pronghorn

Packing our gear the next morning, we planned to stop at a secret fishing hole that our friend Harry shared with us on our drive back over Tioga Pass and through Yosemite. A few other people had the same secret, but we were far outnumbered by the fish - thanks Harry! We stopped a few more places with no more success, but were plenty happy with the seven trout we brought home. Of course no trip to the East Side is complete without a meal at the Whoa Nellie Deli inside the Mobil Gas Mart at Lee Vining. Ted's Lobster Taquitos and my Steak Caesar Salad was outstanding as usual. So good that I had to buy the shirt.

Mine Creek at the Saddlebag Lake turnoffThe Tuolumne River in Yosemite

from nanamoose.typepad.com

Junket Rating:

Whoa Nellie Deli: Junk in the Trunk!

DESERT ROAD TRIP #3: PUTTING THE DEATH IN DEATH VALLEY MARCH 2012

The last leg of my dream desert road trip didn't start out like a dream: a few hours after Beth handed me off to my husband in Barstow we passed through Ridgecrest on the 178 and then past Panamint Springs on the 190 to the Saline Valley Road turnoff, traveling 10 miles or so into the backcountry of Death Valley where the alternator in our 1991 Landcruiser promptly died. In the cold and windy spring desert, we spent the night in the truck while we puzzled what do about our predicament. If Ted had to hike and hitch back to Panamint Springs, how would we get the truck out of the backcountry? If you know cars, you know the alternator can't be fixed - it must be replaced. We had plenty of food and water since we had planned 5 days in the backcountry, but our old dog prevented us from hiking out together and we doubted the towing options from the Saline Valley Road. We could get the truck started and it would run for a few miles before it died again, but the charging time between runs was getting longer. The morning was bright, chilly and still windy as we made it back to the flats of Saline Valley, and soon enough 2 hippy guys came along in their truck on their way to the Saline Valley Warm Springs who were kind enough to give us a jump that got us a few miles more along the road. And then we waited.

We decided to wait since spring is a (relatively) busy time in the Death Valley backcountry and we believed we could get the car back to the highway with just a few more jumps. And so our guardian angel appeared in the form of Alan from Los Angeles. Alan is a backcountry connossieur with a kitted-out truck that included an extra car battery, which he offered to loan us. After determining the battery solution was not the solution and with a generosity of spirit practically unequaled in modern times, Alan followed us back to Panamint Springs, stopping to jump the truck every time it died (approximately 10 times).  What a trooper! We offered to fill his gas tank/wash his car/buy him lunch/put his firstborn through college, but he felt a mere $25 in gas was sufficient payment. Who says there are no good deeds performed in the world today?!

We bid Alan a fond farewell and set up camp at Panamint Springs, which passes for high civilization in Death Valley, while we contemplated our next move. Panamint Springs Resort is a private inholding in the park that consists of a gas station, store, restaurant, motel and campground owned by a family whose members operate every aspect of the place. We had stayed in the motel at Panamint Springs on a previous visit to Death Valley where we were less than impressed, but this time we camped and we loved it.

For $7.50 a night you can camp amongst some of the only trees in the Death Valley desert with free hot showers, flush toilets and wi-fi access. The motel is a work in progress according to the very friendly staff, but the campground may be the best in Death Valley. The watered cactus garden between the road and the campground attracts wildlife - we woke to the sound of frogs (!) in the morning and watched bats dart around in the evening.  The wi-fi access was our saving grace as we couldn't get cell phone service so we used Skype on the iPad to call for help with the truck. And help arrived in the second example of unequaled generosity of spirit as our friend Austin - a resident of Big Pine, CA - drove some number of hours from Bishop, CA where he purchased an alternator and then delivered it to us at the campground. Austin hung around for awhile while Ted tinkered with the truck and introduced us to his friend Chris. We spent 2 nights at Panamint Springs and then headed back into backcountry, confidence renewed.

Before we vacated Panamint Springs, we took a little test run in the truck up an unnamed dirt road east of the junction of 178 and 190 just down the way. The road dead-ends at Panamint Butte and offers a view of the Panamint Dunes which were golden in the sunlight on this spring afternoon. Rusted out cars, cactus and a sweeping view of the Panamint Valley are just three reasons to explore this track.

During our stay at Panamint Springs, I found I had something in common with my new friend Chris: we both blog about food and California. Chris is the author of The Inyo Belly Project, a blog about food in Inyo County and the motorcycle trips he takes to find it. I'm rather jealous. Chris reviews restaurants, explores the sources of agriculture in the Eastern Sierra and documents the ride to get there. Check out photos from his blog below and be sure to give his excellent blog a read:

Chris' photo of the spot where we broke down in Death ValleyRehabilitated truck packed again with camping goods, we headed back up the road (in the photo above) into the backcountry taking the Saline Valley Road to Hunter Mountain Road cresting the mountain at 7000 feet. At the top we found snow, and looked down on the dunes we had seen the day before. The road was spectacular and proved no trouble for our Landcruiser (once the alternator was replaced, of course). Large forests of Joshua Trees and desert panoramas had us pointing around every bend. The descent on the other side made us long for mountain bikes and a wide open campsite. This is the Death Valley that people hope to see when they dream about the desert and the West, so if you're equipped with right vehicle and the Death Valley Backcountry Roads Map, start planning your trip now.

Though it's over 50 miles from Panamint Springs to designated park roads, before we knew it we were at Teakettle Junction and on our way to the Racetrack. Knock the Racetrack off my bucket list as I have been looking forward to seeing this desert phemomena with my own eyes for years. The Racetrack is an ancient dry lake bed, known as a playa, where rocks come to rest that are eroding from the hillside at the playa's edge. The phenomenon occuring here is that these rocks have trails leading to their current location, indicating that somehow these rocks have traveled across the lakebed over time. The prevailing theory is that when the rare bout of rain comes to Death Valley, the playa becomes slick and muddy, allowing the high desert winds to nudge these rocks across the surface a tiny bit at a time. Sound fantastic? You betcha. The other not-quite-so-mysterious phenomenon in this area of the park is the number of teakettles collected at the Teakettle Junction signpost. I'm frankly astounded that NPS condones the graffitti covered collection - it really doesn't seem like their no-whimsy-allowed-style. We neglected to add to the collection, but then how could we top that ceramic snowman job on the back?

"I think I saw that one move!"

Our original travel plan had us meeting friends Kristal and Chris at the Homestake Dry Camp just south of the Racetrack to overnight before we explored the Eureka Sand Dunes at the north end of the park. But due to technical difficulties, we had to abandon that plan and chose the campground at Mesquite Springs instead (missing our friends completely). Never having been impressed with the parking-lot-type campgrounds at Death Valley, we were pleasantly surprised by Mesquite Springs, easily the most scenic developed campground in the park. Once there, we were uncertain as to whether we had enough gas to make it out to the Eureka Dunes and back before driving south to gas up in Furnace Creek the next day. So we'll marvel at the 700 foot dunes on our next trip to DV. With gas limitations our recreation choices were limited, so we took a gander at Ubehebe Crater, the architectural wonder that is Scotty's Castle and enjoyed our scenic campsite after dusty desert exploration.

Though architecture of the mid-century modern kind is my cup of tea, I like architecture in general, probably because I like history and nothing houses history better than a building. So Scotty's Castle, a sort of Spanish Colonial Revival monstrosity that is the main building of the historic Death Valley Ranch, is the particular architectural draw in this park (seriously, who needs a crenellated tower in America?). Located near natural springs in Grapevine Canyon, the ranch had water and electricity when it was built in the 1920s by a Chicago millionaire. Rich peoples' delusions of grandeur aside, the house has some really wonderful architectural details and still occupies the dead center of nowhere in the desert. We passed on the house tour conducted by NPS, but strolled the grounds peering in windows and siting the largest cottonwood tree in North America.  Our only real wildflower sighting this spring visit was under the protecting eaves of one of the outbuildings.

In keeping with the architectural theme, I was looking forward to visiting the newly refurbished Furnace Creek Visitor Center. The National Parks' version of mid-century modern architecture is referred to as Mission 66 - based on the NPS program from 1956 to 1966 that upgraded the national park experience for car-owning Americans after World War II. The concept of the visitor center was created by Mission 66 and all the facilities built during this era reflect the modern design ethic of the time. Unfortunately, most people don't find the modern design pleasing in a national park setting and many of these historic structures have been razed to make way for new structures that emulate "Parkitecture" (officially designated National Park Service Rustic), the pitched-roof log and stone buildings everyone associates with the national parks. However, modern architecture is much better suited to the desert than NPS rustic and I'm personally pleased that someone with veto power in Death Valley recognized the value of their modern buildings. Even better, the building was renovated sustainably with solar power to improve energy efficiency and was built to LEED certification standards. They also did a bang-up job with the look of the place too. On our way out we were accosted by an overly-friendly Desert Wood Rat that had no trouble scooting up the rough-hewn stone walls of the building - our only real wildlife encounter in the park.

The Death Valley History Association operates the visitor center bookstores in the park and they got a spiffy new store with the building renovation. If, like me, you'd like to know more about the California desert, I recommend a book purchased during my visit, "The California Deserts: An Ecological Rediscovery" by Bruce Pavlik that is filled with natural and cultural history, color photos and diagrams galore. If you use the link above for the DVHA, your purchase will directly support Death Valley National Park. After filling up on $6.00 per gallon gas, it was time to leave Death Valley for Yosemite Valley. Despite the breakdown we had yet another marvelous visit to Death Valley and we'll be back as soon as we can.

TRAVEL/FOOD: MORE EASTERN SIERRA EXTRAVAGANZA! PART TWO

My birthday occurs on Bastille Day.  If you are French, that's significant, if not, you'll have to settle for my birthday occurring significantly during the Tour de France every summer.  This year however, I also realized that my birthday occurred right around the running of The World's Toughest Footrace - the Badwater Ultramarathon.  Every summer some VERY strong people run from the lowest point in the U.S: Badwater Basin in Death Valley, to the start of the highest point in the continental U.S.: Mount Whitney Portal, for a total of 135 miles with a total elevation gain of some 13,000 feet.  In July.  Our first clue was this vehicle in a parking lot in Lone Pine:

At first we applauded the vehicle's owner for creative entitlement, but soon realized this was a support vehicle for all those sweaty runners on the 395.  We left the Big Pine Creek campground on my birthday and headed north to Lundy Canyon for two more days of camping.  Stopping over in Bishop for a superb sandwich lunch at Raymond's Deli, I celebrated my French birthday heritage with a Cuban sandwich (1000 Island Cuban) while Ted consumed an Angry Cow.  We also discovered Death Valley Pale Ale.

Raymond's rocked.  Especially the rye bread on my Cuban.  The hippest deli in town, Raymond's staff was not overly impressed with their inherent hipness, which made for great service in addition to great food.  We'll be back to try the rest of the menu as soon as we can.  After resupplying in Bishop for more great camp meals, we cruised the 395 to Lundy Canyon just north of Lee Vining and Mono Lake.  Lundy Canyon is home to Lundy Lake and the Lundy Lake Lake Resort, but we were camping at the county-operated Mill Creek Campground.  Though the campground does not take reservations, there were plenty of sites to choose from on a Thursday, and we found our place at site #5 near the creek with great Sierra views and plenty of wildflowers.

Lundy Canyon is filled with Aspen trees and must be a marvelous sight in the autumn when the leaves turn from green to gold.  The canyons and foothills of the Eastern Sierra was home to a significant Basque sheepherder population during the gold rush days in California.  Sheepherding is a lonely occupation, and the Basque men who had relocated from Europe without family and friends used a unique method to communicate with each other over long distances by carving symbols into Aspen trees, known as arborglyphs. Many carvers perfected their craft by choosing trees and symbols that would not become distorted as the trees grow and are easily recognizable 150 years later.  Unfortunately, others have been inspired to mark the trees with simple grafitti, but the original markings are another reminder of the range of cultures that actually comprise the American West.  To learn more about the Basque arborglyphs, check out Speaking Through Aspens: Basque Tree Carvings in California and Nevada by Joseph Mallea-Olaetxe.  The Lundy Lake Resort, a rustic fishing camp with boat rentals and cabins serving visitors to the lake, is an easy run a few miles up the roadfrom the campground where the store stocks ice. 

The fishing access to Mill Creek and Lundy Lake was somewhat disappointing for us, as the creek was still so high from snow runoff and the lake is really a reservoir for boats.  When Ted spotted a beaver pond in the creek with limited access, he devised a method of access involving an air mattress and layers of clothing to fish in the cold water.  There weren't many keepers but he returned with this:

We made fine meals despite the lack of trout, including Eggs in Hell for breakfast, another brilliant recipe from Mario Batali.  If you have an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, there's an app for that.  I made my own birthday dinner - Pasta Salad with Grilled Sausages and Peppers - that came out quite nicely.  Though my version was more of a pasta dish vs. salad and required prep at home before camping, this recipe from Food & Wine magazine is a winner at home and in the great outdoors.

Fortifed with food, we made ready for a visit to one of California's most popular state parks, Bodie State Historic Park in the Bodie Hills near the Nevada border.  Bodie is a ghost town preserved in a state of "arrested decay" left over from the gold rush in the late 1800s.  As authentic of an Old West experience as you're likely to get, Bodie is a great place to explore in the middle of nowhere and being a state park, Fleabag was welcome to explore with us.  Bodie still contains over 100 buildings with many of the original furnishings.  Several buildings are open for your perusal, and the visitor center is housed in one of the historic buildings with a bookstore operated by the Bodie Foundation.  Inside, we found a copy of Roughing It by Mark Twain which chronicles his younger days in the Wild West, including mining in Nevada.  Hilarious and very entertaining, Roughing It proves that we all need more Mark Twain in our lives.  Evidence of the mining still exists on the hills all around Bodie, where residents reaped the financial rewards of all that gold.  They even ran 13 miles of copper wire from Green Creek to power the stamp mill in 1892, providing early  hydroelectric power to the middle of nowhere.

My greatest sense of Old West authenticity in Bodie came from the sheer amount of dust.  There are no services in Bodie - though the visitor center sells bottled water and the park provides restrooms - so we became parched after our stroll through town.  Seven miles north of the turnoff for Bodie on the 395, you'll find the town of Bridgeport with it's small town charm and horrendous price gouging.  We lucked into the Jolly Kone (and Massage?) burger and ice cream stand and tucked into some righteous burger and fries.

Photo from www.highsierratopix.comAfter a week of Eastern Sierra glory, it was time to go back home to Yosemite.  But first, a mandatory stop at Mono Lake.  Two and a half times saltier than the sea, Mono Lake's water doesn't support much wildlife  though many, many migratory birds nest here.  Formed almost a million years ago, the lake has no natural outlet, so between that and the fact that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power diverts all the freshwater tributaries that normally flow into the lake into the lawns of LA, the lake's salinity has doubled in recent years.  This doesn't seem to bother the lake's most unique denizens - brine shrimp and alkali flies.  The brine shrimp relish the salty envirnment and the flies feed on lake algae.  Visitors to the lake spend time stooped over the shoreline looking at shrimp and swarms of flies.  The flies are peculiar in that they absolutely will not bother humans - you can wave a hand through a swarm and they will move and regroup around you.

Brine Shrimp

Alkali Flies line the lakeshore

This trip we visited the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve and the adjacent Mono Lake County Park.  The county park is a green oasis in the dry Eastern Sierra with manicured lawns, picnic area and play structures.  Access to the lake via the state reserve boardwalk provides a panoramic view of tufa towers and bird habitat.  California's state parks are in crisis and this reserve is slated for closure in 2012 - one of 70 state parks to close due to California's budget woes.  Though the beautiful county park will remain open, you will no longer be able to access the lake from here by next year.  The California State Parks Foundation sponsors the Save Our State Parks campaign to help raise funds for parks.

State parks slated for closure in 2012My fellow Californians, please go visit your local state park and encourage others to do the same.  Consider buying an annual pass, or even better, join the California State Parks Foundation and receive an annual pass as a benefit of the Frequent Visitor donor level.  Who doesn't need more opportunity to go outside and play?

Junket Ratings:

Raymond's Deli: Junk in the Trunk!

Jolly Kone: Junk-O-Rama

TRAVEL/FOOD: EASTERN SIERRA EXTRAVAGANZA! PART ONE

There she is: the Sierra Nevada mountain range from the east side.  You're almost in Nevada from this vantage point in the Bodie Hills and there is still a heck of alot of snow up top for mid July.  The Eastern Sierra exists in the rain shadow of the California coast with hotter and drier conditions than the west side landscape like Yosemite.  The rain shadow effect occurs when moisture from the ocean rises in the form of clouds and falls as precipitation on the ocean side of a mountain range as the clouds bump into the mountains on their way inland.  The resulting rain shadow is the dry land side of the range receiving very little moisture from the clouds that expended their efforts on the ocean side.  So you get places like Death Valley and the Mojave Desert on the lee side of the Sierra.  And Nevada. 

But I love the desert, so the Eastern Sierra is the best of both worlds for me.  Unfortunately for me, I can only access the East Side for a few months during the year (summer) when there isn't 20 feet of snow blocking Tioga Pass.  Unless of course I want to drive around the mountain range to get to the other side, and by that time I am likely distracted by Los Angeles or Las Vegas, so a summer visit it is.  We planned a week long camping excursion for my birthday, starting at Big Pine Creek and ending at Lundy Canyon.  We escaped the horrendous traffic of Yosemite Valley to cross Tioga Pass in the high country and head south on the 395 to Big Pine.  Big Pine is the home of my new favorite BBQ joint: Dick's Smokewagon.  We were rolling in early evening, so I decided Ted needed the Eastern Sierra's best BBQ for dinner and we wouldn't have to wash dishes by headlamp at camp later.  We both ordered the Uncle Floyd sandwich: pulled pork with beans and really good coleslaw.  We tucked it away for the ride to the campground and then tucked in when we arrived.  Temps in the 90s at Big Pine soon cooled to the 60s as we ascended the road from town into Big Pine Canyon to the Big Pine Creek campground at 7700 feet in the Inyo National Forest.  You can see the Palisade Glacier from here:

Our campsite, #9, was located on the foundation of an old warming hut for the skiing at Glacier Lodge with the fireplace and chimney still intact.  A tow rope used to take skiers up the mountain behind the campsite and the hut used to serve hot chocolate, according to the campground host.  The Big Pine Creek Trail splits into North Fork and South Fork just outside the campground, leading hikers to glacial lakes and views of the Palisade Glacier.  The North Fork features two waterfalls, so we thought Fleabag might like the scenery.  We hiked past First Falls until we had a view of Second Falls before returning.  Though Fleabag the old dog enjoyed the hike it took alot out of him and he needed to convalesce for the rest of the day.

First Falls

Second Falls (way in the background center)

The campground host gave Ted some confirmation on the creek's best fishing hole, so while Fleabag and I retired, Ted caught us some trout for dinner.  Big Pine Creek was raging with snowmelt, but just near the campground the creek widens into a pool filled with trout.  All Eastern Sierra creeks and lakes are stocked with hatchery trout every summer, so shame on you if you're not eating trout at your campsite.  One of our best successes with cooking trout results from the 'tin foil pack directly on the coals' method. Following a recipe I spied in Fine Cooking magazine (thanks to mother-in-law for subscription!), I substituted the trout and prepared couscous as an accompaniment and we had a fine camp dinner.

In the morning we rose veeeerrryy early to take a trip south for some desert adventure.  I had read about petroglyphs in the Coso Range near Death Valley (and very close to U2's Joshua Tree) and wanted to see for myself.  It surprised me to learn that the Coso Range in California is home to the greatest concentration of petroglyphs in North America.  Unfortunately and fortunately the canyon home to the most rock art is smack in the middle of the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station - unfortunately because the petroglyphs can only be accessed by a military sanctioned tour in spring and fall and fortunately because this limited access keeps the sites preserved from vandals and development.  The petroglyphs I wanted to see are just past Coso Junction just outside of China Lake, but I didn't have very clear directions.  So we bought some Cheladas and chips at the Chevron station and asked the clerk for information.  He was clueless so we just started driving.  Several dirt roads later around 8 AM, we found the parking area near the entrance to a local pumice mine.

You may have noticed the sign is for pictograph parking, not petroglyphs.  The difference between the two is that pictographs are painted on rock and petroglyphs are pecked out of the dark varnish that accumulates on desert rock.  Pictographs are obviously much rarer as they don't last as long.  These particular pictographs are painted on a large boulder known as Ayers Rock.  For you Aussies, this is the name of one of your biggest tourist attractions, and I find it lame when people are so very unoriginal in their naming.  However, I wil say that once we reached Ayers Rock, the surrounding desert had a definite Outback feel to it, so I'll cut the namers some slack.  The pictographs were painted mostly in shades of red and orange and the surrounding landscape is littered with worked obsidian flakes.  The flakes are centered around Ayers Rock and not any of the other nearby boulders, demonstrating that the people brought their obsidian to this specific site to create projectile points.  However, the pictographs may only be 100 years old, and I'm certain the locals were not hunting with projectile points in the 20th century.  I showed Ted how to create the worked edge using pressure flaking with another piece of obsidian.  What else would I do with that archaeology degree?

The official directions to Ayers Rock:

Take U.S. 395 to Coso Junction, south of Olancha and north of Little Lake and Ridgecrest.  Turn east on Gill Station/Coso Junction Road (rest area on one corner, gas station on the other) and travel 4 miles to a dirt road marked SE 435 on the left.  Take 435 for 5 miles until you reach the gated entrance to a pumice mine.  The parking area is reached via dirt road on the left that parallels the mine property after 1/2 mile.

On the way back to Big Pine from the south we stopped at the cool and shady Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery  to check out the fish and the grounds.  One of the hatcheries that keeps the Eastern Sierra in trout all summer, the building was built on Oak Creek in 1917 as a showplace of the Sierra with 3500 tons of local granite providing walls 2 to 3 feet thick.  The hatchery is located on Fish Hatchery Road 2 miles north of Independence with a lovely shaded picnic area, trout pond (no fishing!) and a gift shop with tours.  I was disappointed to find the gift shop was closed during our visit, as I was extremely curious to see the treasures to be found in a fish hatchery gift shop.  This a great stop for a picnic lunch if you are traveling the 395 in the summer heat.

Another hot aspect of the Eastern Sierra, besides the temps and the desert, are all the hot springs in this geologically active area.  Last time we visited, we took Fleabag to Keough hot ditch just south of Bishop where he did his best impression of Captain Nemo and really seemed to enjoy the warm water.  This visit he wasn't quite as enthused (his sight and hearing are going so he doesn't always enjoy unfamiliar landscapes) but eventually the warm water calmed his old bones.  Though it has the most unappealing name, Keough hot ditch has great pools maintained by locals with boulders and sandy bottom.  The pools are directly underneath high tension wires (yikes!) where you can hear and feel the electricity crackling.  Evening is the best time since the hot spring water is diverted during the day to Keough's Hot Springs Resort further up the hill.  The resort releases the water after closing and the hot ditch water levels increase.  Lots of reports on the web about this place, but I've never seen naked people and trash is kept to a minimum.

On our last day at Big Pine Creek, Ted and I went our separate ways as he wanted to bike from our campsite to the town of Big Pine and back (3000 ft elevation gain - the man is a glutton for physical punishment) and I wanted to exert myself somewhat less by visiting the Eastern California Museum in Independence.  I left Ted mid-journey as he refueled at the Hi-Country Market and Hardware inside the Mobil Station on the corner of Main and Crocker.  If you're in Big Pine, this market has it all - a beer cave, firewood, very clean restrooms, a dog named Sophie, good service, local peppers and honey, Cheladas and a selection of fine sun hats (do not go to Carroll's Market located right on Main: overpriced and dingy - yuck).  We found other features of Big Pine nearly as charming, including the fishing dummy functioning as a sort of Sierra lawn jockey and the sensible rules posted at the Big Pine Cemetery:

I left Ted to labor his way up the road back to camp and took off for Independence, 26 miles south of Big Pine, to see the museum and the home of author Mary Austin.  The Eastern California Museum was organized in 1928, first occupying a room in the courthouse building.  Later the museum moved to it's present site, including the relocation of many historic buildings to the grounds to recreate that Old West sentiment.  Operated by Inyo county, the museum and staff are lovely and it's just the sort of museum you want to see in the West:  old school glass and wood display cases piled with Indian artifacts and old west memorabilia.  They have an excellent exhibit on Manzanar (the WWII Relocation Camp just down the highway), some fascinating newspapers from the era of the Owens Valley water wars with Los Angeles, and an impressive collection of Paiute and Shoshone baskets.  In addition, I think they may have collected every historic item that ever passed through the Owens Valley.  The bookstore is worth a visit alone, as Independence's location between the Sierra and the desert covers a range of interests including mountain trout fishing, Death Valley, local history of mining and ghost towns, Owens Lake, wildflowers, campfire recipes and the local native population. 

Independence was the historic home of Mary Austin, author of The Land of Little Rain, a classic of California literature where she wrote: "This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough."  Her home is now California Historical Landmark #229 and though privately owned, the museum staff said the current owners have restored the house to it's original brown color.   A novelist, poet, critic, playwright, and feminist she was born in Illinois in 1868. Twenty years later, she accompanied her parents when they relocated to California's San Joaquin Valley. Three years later, she married Stafford Wallace Austin and the couple moved to Independence in the Eastern Sierra where they designed the house that is now a California Historical Landmark.  After Owens Valley lost the battle to prevent Los Angeles from diverting the Owens River to support the agriculture and suburbs of southern California, Stafford moved to Death Valley and Mary moved to Carmel where her circle of friends included Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and George Sterling.  She died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1934.

From www.noehill.comMary Austin from Wikipedia

Before we left Big Pine on our way north to camp in Lundy Canyon,  we stopped to see our friend Austin who lives in Big Pine with his wife Laurie and son Jack.  We envy our friends their lovely home in the Eastern Sierra and hope to take them up on offers of dinner and directions to more petroglyphs in the near future.

Ted, Austin and Jack

Junket Ratings:

Dick's Smokewagon: Junk in the Trunk!

Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery: Junk-O-Rama

Hi-Country Market and Hardware (Mobil Station): Junk-O-Rama

Eastern California Museum: Junk-O-Rama

And we used our favorite guidebook for this part of California:

Yosemite, the Southern Sierra Nevada & Death Valley

TRAVEL RETROSPECTIVE: RAFTING THE GREEN RIVER IN UTAH OCTOBER 2009

 

Two significant things happened for me at the end of April: my friend Beth relocated from Yellowstone back to Yosemite and my lovely friend Hans passed away at his home in Zion.  Both friends have been great traveling companions in recent years - I look forward to more adventures with Beth, and am very sad not to have more with Hans.  However, Hans and his wife Bonnie shared a great travel adventure with me and Ted in 2009 and I thought to share the tale retrospectively here on my travel blog.  During my stay in Utah from 2008 to 2010, Ted and I went for all the local fun: canyoneering, mountain biking, and river rafting.  We planned a birthday trip for Ted in October 2009 that included rafting on the Green River.  We chose the Labyrinth Canyon section of the river for several reasons, but mainly because it is stillwater rafting (as opposed to whitewater) that is easy for first-timers, and being north of Canyonlands National Park, we could bring our dog, Fleabag.  Then we decided to invite Hans, Bonnie and their dog, Pedro.  We planned to float 68 river miles in four days on two 10 foot rafts with four people and two dogs.

	Put-in: Green River State Park Take-Out: Mineral Bottom or Green/Colo. Confluence Trip Length: 3-8 days Mileage: 68 or 120 mi. Class: I

The Labyrinth Canyon rafting trip can start at Green River State Park, in the town of Green River on Interstate 70, some 50 miles northwest of Moab.  Coming from Rockville (us) and Springdale (them), it's a five hour road trip to Green River.  We planned to camp one night in the state park and set sail the next morning.  All Utah state parks are fantastic (these state parks would be national parks in other states, Utah is so blessed with spectacular scenery) and Green River is no exception.  On the banks of the Green, the park itself is green, with plenty of shade trees and grass.  We stayed at site #27.

Courtesy of http://stateparks.utah.govThough ultimately successful, our first rafting venture wasn't without it's complications.  You would think that rafting on a desert river would provide a fairly predictable and consistent weather pattern - sunny skies, hot days, cool nights, very little cloud cover.  On our (unplanned) second day at Green River SP, we viewed the sky with apprehension, but decided we could wait no longer in order to be off the river by our deadline four days later.  We packed an unimaginable amount of gear onto two rafts lashed together (affectionately dubbed the S.S. Shitshow) and launched.  And three miles down the river it began to storm.  The wind became so fierce that we could no longer paddle, the river was whitecapped AND running backwards upstream.  Though we never felt like we were in any danger, we obviously were getting nowhere with 65 miles to go.  So we sat on the muddy bank in our raincoats and waited patiently for the storm to pass.  The video below is not us, but this rafting party experienced the same type of weather:

Through breaks in the weather we made it five miles downstream the first day and camped at Crystal Geyser.  The crappy weather was not through with us that evening - we had to hurry through dinner and wait out strong winds in our tents.  Crystal was feeling sluggish the next morning, and we wondered about the campsite in proximity to an active geyser.  What I now know is that Crystal Geyser is not a geothermal feature, but a rare example of a cold water carbon dioxide driven geyser - no hot water involved.  We launched into better weather for a day of paddling with less wind, more sun and changing landscape.

Courtesy of www.allmoab.comHans and the shitshowFleabag and Pedro wait patiently to boardAfter a second night of camping in windy weather on an island in the river somewhere near Ruby Ranch, we made it to the sunny desert weather we were anticipating.  We spent the remainder of our trip on the slow-moving river basking in the sun mixed with bouts of strenuous paddling.  The first week of October is the absolute last week of rafting season in Utah due to low water level.  We paddled and paddled and in some spots had to drag the raft through mere inches of water.  Needless to say there are no rapids on this float trip.  With the sunny weather came spectacular scenery including jumping fish, plenty of birds and wildflowers here and there.

In between bouts of paddling, we read aloud from Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, where Ed and his friend Ralph Newcomb raft the Colorado River through Glen Canyon just before the installation of the Glen Canyon Dam desecrated the canyon by submerging and naming it Lake Powell.  We should've read The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons by Major John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War hero that explored these canyons with ten men by boat in July 1869, one hundred years to the day before I was born.  Powell wrote, “There is an exquisite charm in our ride down this beautiful canyon. We are all in fine spirits. We whistle or shout or discharge a pistol to listen to the reverberations among the cliffs. We name this Labyrinth Canyon."  Powell later became the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey and the director of the Bureau of Ethnology for the Smithsonian Institute.  I somehow doubt that he would be happy about being Lake Powell's namesake.

Our third and fourth nights out we made camp in the most fantastic sites amongst red rock walls and ate hearty dinners with excellent company.  Fleabag, the old dog we call "Grampa", was thoroughly worn out and slept all day in the raft and all night in the tent.  Pedro, a mere child in dog years, was a large black lab with energy to match and wanted to swim, explore, run, eat and jump all at the same time.  We began to refer to him as "No Pedro" to commemorate the most frequent saying of the trip.  Though Pedro loved the water, he was too chicken to swim alongside the raft, so he parked himself atop the shitshow of gear and other boaters on the river recognized us from Pedro's perch.

The curse and the blessing of rafting is it's similarity to car camping - load up all of your stuff and go.  Ted functioned as sherpa on this trip, loading and reloading the rafts with various dry bags, coolers, tents, buckets, water jugs, etc.  The bulk of the gear was piled in the center of the lashed together rafts, and though this was very effective packing, you could hear the theme from "Sanford and Son" as we drifted down the river.  Next time we'll review the gear more carefully to spend less time loading and unloading and more time enjoying the river.  However, we did eat and drink like kings.

Michelle enjoys a cocktail on the river

We made it off the river in time for Hans to be back at work the next day with only one more minor debacle as our Landcruiser wouldn't start at the takeout in Mineral Bottom.  Other river rafters were kind enough to give us a jump and later that evening, after towing the rafts back to Green River, we enjoyed the hospitality of the Tamarisk Restaurant and Motel 6 before driving back to Rockville the next day.  We didn't do any hiking on this trip due to all the paddling required to get us out on time, something to remedy in the future. 

Though we all enjoyed the rafting, Hans claimed he wouldn't do it again, though I suspect we could have lured him out on any number of future adventures.  He loved nothing more than tinkering with their camping trailer to be ready for the next trip.  Hans' easy-going nature and great sense of humor made him an excellent traveling companion and a great friend.  We enjoyed every minute we spent with Hans, both at home in Utah and on the road camping, rafting or enjoying the view in Lake Tahoe.  Hans' family, friends and colleaugues held a lovely memorial service for him in Zion National Park on Saturday, April 30 2011.

Hans Juergen Suerig