Overland Camping Roadtrip Blog
Travel Day 41:
Total km driven to date: 7811km
Total km walked to date: 318.24km
Alabama Hills, CA – Pine Creek/Inyo National Forest, CA
147km drive
4.91km on foot
I had one of those days that reminds me why I’m doing this trip, started my morning slowly in the Alabama Hills. Finished up some photos from the past 2 days and then spent some time uploading everything onto my removable hard-drive which I’ve been backing up in case my cheesy laptop decides to die on me, or even worse get stolen. Then it was on the road around noon to head back to Lone Pine to use the internet and upload my Glen Helen photos and update my blog. Got some great response and lots of comments on my photos already which is always nice. Then I headed back onto US-395 destination who knows….north! The mountains on either side continue to get closer together, the valley bottom only about 10km apart as I rolled into Bishop, CA. Filled up with gas, my most expensive yet….$4.09/Gal, ouch, gone are the days in Colorado of $2.55/Gal.
Just north of town a few miles I saw a sign for Inyo National Forest access, Pine Creek Rd and since it was about 4pm it was time to find a campsite for the night. We travelled up the windy road, climbing from 4500ft to 7000ft as huge cliffs loomed on either side and the creek ran by the road. First running water Axel has seen in over 2 weeks and his first move was to go barrelling towards it and bury himself in the creek, drinking and splashing around……my Canadian Sheppard is not a desert dog! Even proper large trees started to show up! The road abruptly ends at a gate of an old mine and the mountains surround on 3 sides, thousands of feet overhead. I turn back around on down a small cut off I saw on the way up, finding one of the nicest camp spots I’ve had in weeks. This is a long ways from the desert, big rocks, big trees overhead and a rushing creek 10ft from my truck, all surrounded by huge mountains, this is my kinda place! I filled my solar shower from the creek, then I filled my camper water tank from the same creek (I have a 5gal jug I fill at walmart for drinking, the rv water I just use for dishes and Axel). Laundromat, who needs a damn laundromat, I decided to do some laundry in the creek too, everything was pretty dusty from Glen Helen. Finishing that I wanted to take some pictures of the water falling over the rocks so I grabbed my trusty tripod, stripped down to my underwear and set up the camera in the middle of the creek to take some photos, turned out great! After dinner we went for a bit of a walk before it got dark, finding a random trail that I followed until it led us to the bottom of one of the massive cliffs, clearly the trail was put in by rock climbers since there was pins for ropes all over on the cliff, very cool random find. Then with the falling light it was time to come back to camp and work on some photos, great day, beautiful scenery.
