California, 5th November, Ballarat to Sequoia, via Trona

Our aim was to get eventually to Sequoia National Park, hopefully before it got too late in the day. We drove back Emigrant Canyon Road and exited the park through Panamint Springs. Here we saw our last glimpse of the valley, lost in a heat haze. it was nice to see a green tree after the barren hills.

Driving south along the 178 we passed a sign for Ballarat, another 'ghost town'. We didn't like to pass it by so drove up the road to find a collection of rough housing, mainly inhabited and a sign inviting us to stay. We had seen lorries going backwards and forwards under the mountain so guessed that some sort of mining or quarrying activity was being undertaken. Unfortunately we found their notice rather scary as it said we were free to buy their drink and use their guns, so we turned back onto the main road. The first picture is the 178 going south and the next the road up to Ballarat.

Our next stop was the town of Trona, a settlement based on bauxite mining with a large factory and its own railway with rolling stock that seemed to go on for miles. We had read in the guidebook that there were some tufa towers here, the Trona Pinnacles, which had been formed in the prehistoric Searle's Lake. I could not possibly resist a bit of tufa so we went down to the site, over the railway line. A very different view from the tufa at Mono Lake. Here the tufa was brown and desiccated and stood out from a dull earthen base. It looked a little like the surface of the moon, and the location has been used for a number of films including Star Wars. As we walked around we were bombarded by the sound of military jets from nearby Evans Airforce base. 

After a long walk around the pinnacles, which I would definitely recommend, we went back into town and found a little café near the factory. We had a burrito and a coffee each for a grand total of $7  the cheapest we had eaten anywhere since our arrival in California. While we were there a group of people came in, one of whom had just retired from the bauxite works, so it must have been their 'local' lunch stop.

We now felt that we should get on. We stopped at Ridgecrest for some shopping, there is a museum of naval armaments and technology here but we didn't go to see it. Though we did see the this sign which was quite enough for us.

We had chosen the most direct and scenic route to cross to Sequoia but had not appreciated that this was the most twisty up and down road we had ever travelled upon. We took the 178 and then north on the 65. It got dark fairly rapidly but it was the night of the full moon so had to make a few stops to look at it. The first is travelling out of Ridgecrest and the second shortly afterwards where I got lucky with a Joshua tree.

The final image was taken at Lake Isabella where we stopped for a hasty evening meal of egg sandwiches. Mairi drove most of the way, but around an hour from the end she had had enough and I took over. We finally got to Patwisha campground in Sequoia park around 10.00pm and rolled into bed.