Getting Started - Road Trip 2019

After literally months of planning and making reservations – yes reservations are a fact of RV travel these days - we knew the Canadian Rockies and Glacier National Park in July, would be popular destinations.  For those parks, reservations were made the day they were available online.

We are travelers and will see what we can – when we can.  When we can arrange a house sitter … we travel!

For the first time we are leaving San Diego on a Sunday morning and it sure made a difference in traffic!

It was an easy drive north on 395 to our usual first night at Fossil Falls.  We stopped in Ridgecrest for gas and a few supplies at Walmart.  BTW – Walmart offers overnight parking if that is needed, but always check ahead! 

Oops when leaving the Walmart lot I whacked the steps on the curb.  They do still go up into the travel position but not all the way down.  I’ll not do anything about it until there is time when we return home.

 
First night is usually Fossil Falls.  It’s on the northbound side of 395 and about the right distance from San Diego at ~200 miles.  The night sky makes for excellent star gazing and it has excellent cell service.

The red rock gravel crew maintain Cinder Road, wish they’d come into the campground, that road is in terrible condition.  Although fresh gravel has been placed on the access to the day use area, the campground itself is pretty bad!

Our spot tucked in, and again the campground is empty.  There is a $6/3 fee to use the campground, but there are also a few boondocking sites beyond the campground toward the Little Lake Overlook.  I’ve been stopping here for decades and even with the fee I’ll stop here, or in one of the boondocking spots.

Looking down over the falls.

I have blogged this area before, as has Gaelyn, the geogypsy HERE.  She covered the site much better than I have.  Well she is a ranger with an inquisitive mind.

The Happy Hour Flag is up.  Stop by for a glass of wine. The flag was a gift from our son and DIL – it’s a wine theme spinnaker.  

Erik Schat's has taken over the building next door to the bakery turning it into a wine and cheese shop. Nice idea – bread, wine and cheese all in one stop shop.  Tastings were not being offered when we stopped by.

But we still go for the world’s best turkey sandwich and enjoy lunch in the park

The baby ducks provide a bit of cuteness to the lunch break.

There’s a big rodeo event going on in Bishop, so we do not spend much time here.  We climb up to the Inyo National Forest where there is still a lot snow in the Sierra

We found a quiet spot in the Inyo National Forest with better than expected cell service!  The high was 82 but a chilly 44 overnight.

An additional testing of my knee on a short 3 mi hike, Fran had time to take a few practice swings.
From here we’ll head over the mountains to Lake Tahoe for a visit.

Certainly we’ve had No Bad Days as we begin our trip, trust your days were great too!

Persied Meteor Shower - a celestial summer event

I have decided to break this into 2 post rather than a long one, and I don’t have anything planned for next weeks post.  So, this is part 1/2.

The heat wave has come to SoCal, we’re setting some new records.  It’s also fire season and monsoon season.  So where to go to watch the sky falling?


Borrego Springs or Ocotillo Wells would usually be my first choice, but it’s hot 116F that’s too hot for me!  “But it’s a dry heat!”

Image from: http://strangebtrue.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-chinchorro-mummies-of-south-america.html

It’s actually cooler in Slab City and I do have some paint to donate to Salvation Mountain.  Along with a trip to the mud volcanoes that would make a blog. But I really don’t want to do that walk in this heat.

Joshua Tree at 4400’ is much cooler, but is forecast with heavy clouds that stretch all the way to Flagstaff.

The smoke and haze plaguing the Eastern Sierra is reported to top out around 5600’.  Pretty Ez-Pz to get higher than that.

I checked the pair of web cams that the Lone Pine Film History Museum, maintains, to get an idea what the Owens Valley is looking like.  The valley is again socked with smoke this morning, but it was clear yesterday.  I have decided to take my chances with the White Mountains as my destination.

Normally my first stop would be an overnight at Fossil Falls.  But, I arrived too early.  At 2 PM it was still 107F outside, it’s a dry heat – HA! it’s hot.  But the entrance road was graded, sweet, I have not seen that in some time.  So I decided to see if it was graded as far as Little Lake Overlook.  Nope only as far as the quarry at Red Mountain.



I went as far as the playa for a late lunch stop.  In the spring or after a good rain the this becomes a shallow pond and the road will get pretty muddy.  The overlook is 4 miles from here and it did not look RV friendly.


While sitting here with the generator and AC running, a pair of Mercedes SUVs stopped by for a photo shoot.  The photographers had some fancy gear but no movie cameras, so this must be local print advertising and not a commercial.


If you enlarge this picture, notice the tire ruts on the left?  It took him a couple tries to get to the top of the red pumice field.


Altho it was a nice break, I decided not to waste propane on the generator and continued up 395 to Boulder Creek RV Park.  This is one of the nicest parks on 395 and their prices reflect it!  Still, it’s a big splurge to spend $40 for 30 amp FHU with cable and excellent WiFi.



When I arrive at Boulder Creek Mt Whitney is nearly invisible behind the haze of the smoke.  But it clears in the morning.  I like that Boulder Creek has a late checkout time, I take advantage of that since I don’t have far to go, and they have FREE muffins each morning, and good WiFi.


The Copper Top in Big Pine was voted Best BBQ in the USA in 2015.  The tri-tip was slow roasting over the hardwood fire when I arrived.  I do like good tri-tip, so I picked up a tri-tip sandwich for lunch.  Is it the best in the USA? Altho it is far better, with much more flavor and leaner, than the one I had at OTL a couple weeks ago, I would not say it is the best I have ever had.



From Big Pine it’s only 20 miles, all up hill with a short 1-way road section that has no signal.  Not sure how to determine if the section is in use, so I just honk my horn and cross my fingers that no one is coming the other way.

My destination is the Grandview Campground just outside of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains.


The Forest Service is now asking for a $10 donation/night for a campground that was free a few years ago.  When public land is taken advantage of, this can be a result.

The campsites are on the side of the mountain, where it can be tough to get level, and only a couple are big rig friendly and I'm pretty tiny.  I find a nice spot where it’s 20 degrees cooler then yesterday, well it is quite a bit higher at an elevation of 8609 feet.


The campground is a loop with an open meadow in the center.  The campsites on the northside would be better for my purpose of viewing the evening planets, so I left the RV and went to check them out, but alas nothing more suitable was available.  I then setup in the site #11 for the next few days.


I decided to whip up a Greek salad for dinner, and since I only ate half of my sandwich for lunch I could add a little tri-tip.


Tonight’s sunset looked more like dusk, with all the smoke and haze.  Altho the planets were easily visible in my little 4" Celestron the conditions did not allow a picture.  To be clear I get a picture by holding the camera to the eye piece  …. lame, I know.  And the next night CLOUDS!  Not good for sky watching, but the firefighters have to feel prayers are being answered, at least there is increased humidity, if not rain.



I took quite a few star shots hoping to catch a Perseid.  The first picture has a nice early view of the Milky Way.  In the second the dashed line, in the lower right,  is an airplane and straight across from it is a brief tiny solid line.  A Perseid?  Not sure, I did not see it, but the camera did – success!


For certain there are No Bad Days (or Nights!) at Grandview Campground.

In part 2 I’ll visit some old friends, some REALLY OLD friends, and make a few stops on the way home I have not seen on other blog posts.