California 31st October, drive to Bristlecone Pine Forest and Mount Whitney

We did a lot on 31st October. Following our visit to the tufa we had breakfast at the Nicely's all American diner in Lee Vining. It had to be pancakes, egg and bacon with maple syrup for me. Mairi had a sort of scone thing which was giant.

We went back to the campsite, filled our water containers up and said goodbye. On the way out of Lee Vining we popped into the Mono Lake Committee building and watched a video on their conservation success and bought a couple of cards.

The it was time to go south on the 395 although we made a diversion around the June Lake Loop which lies a few miles south of Lee Vining. Here are 4 lakes and we were hoping for some nice autumn colour but the aspens were largely over. The lake areas were quite commercialised and a little bit disappointing although there was hardly anyone else around. In the winter this is used as a ski area, but the snow hadn't arrived. On the way down we passed Mount Dana which can be seen in the first picture. It was quite bright but with some interesting cloud formations, although the light was very harsh. I made a monochrome conversion of the view in the second picture (see end of this series).

Back on the 396 we carried on with the joy of actually having tumbleweed cross the carriageway in front of us. 

We reached the town of Bishop. The first proper town we had been in since San Francisco and we were eager to replenish our food stocks. We could only find one rather weird supermarket, a Kmart which had little food and a lot of cheap clothes. Our intention was to drive into Death Valley on a back route past Scotty's Castle so we turned left at Big Pine only to find that the way to the valley would mean driving over 30 miles of unmetalled road. Wishing to keep our teeth intact we saw a signpost to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest and went there instead. We were now about an hour away from Bishop. We stopped at a vista point on the way to get some views of the Sierra Nevada. The panorama above was made with 9 photos.

Arriving at the visitor centre at the Bristlecone Pine Forest we were alone apart from some people from a touring drama company on an outing. We had a very late lunch and examined the signboards. We could either do a 2 hour walk and see the one of the most ancient organic object on records, the Methuselah Tree (around 8,000 years old) or do a half hour one. As the board said that the Methuselah Tree was not identified to keep it safe we thought we might as well do the half hour trail and avoid the frustration of trying to spot it. There were lots of birds in the visitor centre so I fitted the 70-200mm lens on the camera, with the teleconverter, thinking I would take bird photos. Of course as soon as we stepped away the birds disappeared, they were only there for the sandwiches, so I was left to take details or long views of the trees!! However this proved to be an interesting exercise and Mairi did not understand why I kept walking away from everything I wanted to photograph. The trees were actually very interesting and many of them seemed dead apart from one branch with needles and cones on. This area is known as the White Mountains and the rock is dolomitic limestone which is very alkaline. Very little grows on it so the bristlecone pine has had no competition.

What with the photography the half hour walk spun out to about an hour and we started to worry about where we would stay. We drove back to the main 396 and drove further south to Lone Pine, a really interesting town which I would like to return to. By this time it was dark. We had forgotten that it was halloween and the whole of Lone Pine was out on the street dressed to the nines as ghosts and vampires. We started to worry about running small inhabitants over as they waived around over the road. We drove one way and then, coming out of the town, the other looking for a campsite. Not finding one and wishing to get out of the pandemonium we found a side turning. Although we did not know it we were on the Whitney Portal Road and as we drove up and up we eventually came to a sign for a campsite situated right underneath Mount Whitney. Mount Whitney is 14,505 ft high and the highest mountain in the USA excluding Alaska, so it was pretty cold and windy in the campsite but we were very pleased to have found it thinking we would just have to park at the side of the road.

There were no RV spaces left so we parked in an area reserved for tents. Having a bit of a hybrid outfit, no larger than a lot of cars but lacking canvas we were always a bit puzzled about where we should go. We were so tired supper consisted of peanut butter sandwiches and when it came to lock the car for the night we discovered that Mairi had thrown our only key into the bear proof litter bin. Fortunately the bin was not as foolproof as the ones on Yosemite, where we would have been completely stymied and we managed to retrieve it. 

Before we bedded down I managed to take a photo of Mount Whitney at night. Very windy and quite cloudy but pretty atmospheric.