Overland Camping Roadtrip Blog
Travel Day 40:
Total km driven to date: 7664km
Total km walked to date: 313.33km
Alabama Hills, CA
0km drive
4.66km on foot
Today we stayed in our camping spot in the Alabama Hills since I wanted some time to work on Glen Helen footage and also because it is just an amazing spot. We got up early and did some panoramic photography of the Sierra’s with the sun hitting them, turned out very cool. Starting about 9am the ground started shaking with some of the loudest plane exhaust I have ever heard. We are not too far north of Edwards Airforce Base and also the Naval Advanced Weapons Range and clearly was hearing something ripping around overhead. Whatever it is is extremely loud and flying extremely high up since there is no clouds in the sky and I tried for a quite a while to see what it was. I decided to head out for a hike before the hottest time of day with Axel and we took off across the valley floor. We got about 2km into the hike and took a rest in the shade of a neat canyon. Axel started to whine and I checked out his paws and they were looking really beat up and cracked from all the hot rocks so I decided it was best to head back to camp….too bad, I really wanted to climb that mountain in the distance. Got back to camp and set up in my lawn chair in the shade of some huge boulders to work on photos, not a bad office if you ask me. The planes were still ripping around overhead and unfortunately due to all the thunder in the past few weeks Axel now thinks that loud planes like that are thunder so he had a scared afternoon trying to hide from the sounds. Later in the day I finally spotted one of the planes flying overhead, not sure what it was but got to watch my own personal airshow for about 15min as the pilot did all sorts of manoeuvres right above us, even saw him break the sound barrier since a huge puff of condensation boils off the wings as they cross over to the speed of sound. One of the more memorable moments of my trip so far, god bless the American Military complex for the tax payer funded airshow! Thanks to the Solar Shower hanging in the sun all day and the 35* weather I had my first real hot shower in 40 days, it was glorious, not as good as just standing at home and letting the water fall on you since I have to conserve it, but the scenery can’t be beat hangin out naked in the desert. Then it was dinner, more photos, some more night photography and bed, we will be heading on northwards tomorrow, our time in the desert is quickly coming to a close.
