After homeschool, I took the kids a couple miles up the road to Convict Lake to do some fishing. We didn’t catch anything, but the views were stunning:
After returning from the fishing trip, I mounted an RV wiring harness in the bed of the truck. The first step was to drill a hole in the wall of the truck’s bed:
Then it was just a matter of running the wiring harnesses and screwing everything in:
Good Shabbos from BLM land near Mammoth Lakes, CA!
This morning, we drove into “downtown” Bishop to visit the famous Mountain Light Gallery, home of the work of Galen Rowell. I’ve been wanting to visit for a few years and I was not disappointed. The work on display is an inspiration as incredible photography and a promotion of the incredible landscapes of the Eastern Sierra. This is a photo of the guest photographer room, which featured the impressive work of Guy Tal:
Leaving Bishop, we drove a bit Northeast to the historic town of Laws to visit the railroad museum there:
We learned that the phrase “Breakneck Speed” comes from what happens when a Penny Farthing rider looses control at speed:
Artifacts and buildings collected throughout the Owens Valley are on display here:
Each of the dozens of buildings was set up to be a newspaper office, doctor’s office, etc.:
This caboose was built in the late 1800s:
Like a ski lift, this is one end of a tram used to bring tungsten ore out of the Sierras:
The docent demonstrated a restored period winch used to bring ore carts out of a shaft:
The docent fired up the restored engine that runs the mill. He demonstrated the 4 phases of a four-cycle engine’s operation, which was easy to see as the piston is partially exposed at the top of its stroke.
It really runs! And it drives some of the belts, although they are not yet hooked up to the mill:
Outside again, we saw how train engines were turned around, as Laws was for a time the Northern terminus of the line that ran South to Owens Lake:
We got to go inside the shop to see other trains and cars being restored:
We peeked into more buildings:
The model train display had the same 1776 engine and caboose commemorative set that my parents purchased for me in 1976:
We left Laws and headed Northwest to overnight on BLM land near Crowley Lake, a few miles outside of the town of Mammoth Lakes. The forecast in Bishop, at 4000 feet, for this weekend is in the 90s. Here at 7200 feet we’re expecting mid 70s. See the trip map for details. Tonight, B made her own letterbox stamp, inspired by the Sierras:
Yep, it’s rough living with views like this. Out nearest neighbor is about 1/4 mile away.
To get the RV level on this slope last night, we unhitched and lowered the front almost to the ground:
View from the roof of the RV:
We drove back into Independence and visited the Eastern California Museum:
The museum has an extensive collection of artifacts from Manzanar:
There was also a display about the aqueduct that dried up the Owens Valley to slake the thirst of Los Angeles:
Lots of other old stuff, like medicine bottles and vacuum tubes:
The other side of the museum houses an Indian beadwork and basket weaving display:
There was a sizeable outdoor collection as well:
On the way out of town, we briefly visited the historic courthouse. A county employee showed us the 1890s court room upstairs, which had metal hoops under each seat to store one’s hat:
Continuing North, we visited the Whitney Fish Hatchery. A forest fire and flood a few years ago destroyed the watershed, so now the hatchery is operated solely as a visitor center:
Someday these little guys will be released into the pond:
Feeding the fish outside:
Continuing North, we dropped off the RV in Big Pine and followed the sinuous ascent to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest about 25 miles out of town, home to the world’s longest lived individual organisms, the Bristlecone Pines, some of which are over 4,700 years old. The visitor center, at 10,000 feet, is not yet open for the season:
This tree was over 3,200 years old when it died in the late 1670s:
We climbed the trail:
View of the Sierras from our vantage point on the other side of Owen’s Valley:
I know, you’re thinking “Isn’t that Quartzite in the foreground? That’s funny, ‘cause you’ve visited Quartzsite”:
A little snow was present:
Here’s a panorama of the Sierras:
We returned to Big Pine, hitched up the RV, and drove to Bishop. We only intended to stop for groceries, but seeing that there were 20 or so RVs parked in the grocery store lot, we decided to spend the night here ourselves.
This was the second detention camp we’ve visited. We visited Heart Mountain in the summer of 2011.
The only thing more shocking than America violating its own constitution to detain its own citizens based solely on their ethnicity is the fact that most Americans today don’t even know this happened.
The visitor center listed the names of those detained here:
There were dozens of blocks, each containing 14 barracks, a men’s and women’s toilet building, and a mess hall. Today two barracks and a mess hall in one block are the only remaining buildings at Manzanar:
The barracks were just tar paper over plywood. Each barracks was divided into four rooms which housed up to eight people:
The prisoners at Manzanar built their own social hall which was converted into the visitor center:
Some blocks built community gardens, which no longer have water running through them:
The West side of the camp has a memorial obelisk at the inmate cemetery:
After the kids received their Junior Ranger badges, we continued North to Independence where we are parked just off of Onion Valley road just a bit out of town:
Onion Valley is the hardest cycling climb in California, but I’m still sore from Horseshoe Meadows on Monday, so I doubt I’ll attempt the climb tomorrow. See the trip map for today’s drive.
This morning I rode to the top of Horseshoe Meadows, another Hors Categorie climb, the 2nd hardest cycling climb in California and the fourth hardest climb in the US. It was 6,400 feet of vertical over 22 miles. I rode down from our campsite to town to start the climb:
At mile 22, with 6,100 feet of non-stop vertical climbing behind me, I broke a spoke:
Here’s the climb data up until the spoke broke:
I didn’t feel comfortable going down the mountain with a broken spoke, so Trish came up with the truck. Here I am setting out to complete the last couple miles of the climb:
We met up at the top of the climb and went for a hike at 10,000 feet in the Sierras. B brought her fancy walking stick:
We played in the snow a bit:
We all drove down together. On the drive down, I kept saying “wow, I rode up this?”
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