Wednesday Sep 6, 2023 - Diaz Lake Campground to Lake Sabrina Campground

Woke up to blue sky and bright sunshine from the eastern side of this valley we are in. Morning coffee and tea while we wake up. It never got cold enough for the heater so maybe tonight since it is asking to be run. The Wabasto heater wants to be run at least once a month to keep everything lubed and operating and it blinks when it’s been a month.

Pretty much nobody came in after us last night so the campground is pretty empty this morning. We closed everything up and then headed into Lone Pine for MacDonald’s for breakfast and coffee and wifi. The plan had been to have breakfast at Alabama Hills Cafe, which came highly recommended by Judy Perry, but Wednesday (today) is the one day of the week they’re closed. Next stop was the Inter-Agency Park Visitor Center. Really nice BLM center with a very cool exagerated 3D topo map that made us realize how we really are in a deep valley between two mountain ranges. And Mt Whitney is the highest peak at 14,500 something feet high and Langely is right next to it at over 14,000 ft. We noticed the road to Death Valley (140 miles east) is closed since the hurricane (Hilary) came through and dumped a year’s worth of rain in a single day. Lots of washed roads and lots of now dried up mud in a lot of the roads we are ending up on.

Next stop was the Museum of Western Film History. The Alabama Hills area, where we are today, is famous for Hollywood and Westerns. Since the 1920’s they have been coming here to shoot movies. Some non-westerns were filmed here as well. They said that George Lucas shot some parts of Star Wars there and at one point put a call out to the elementary school to hire first graders for a scene where they needed short aliens of some kind carrying R2D2 around. They got paid $25 for the day and the teacher made a project out of it. The heyday seems to have been the 20’d through the 50’s and then it tapered off as the market for westerns tapered off.

We then went to Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp where 10,000 Japanese-American citizens were rounded up in 1942 and kept until 1945. They built a small city with pretty rough conditions and the park service did a nice job with old pictures and peoples’ stories of their years here. Like the other sad histories it is important to remind people how far we have come. Lets not go there again.

Next stop was Keough Hot Springs which did not turn out as enticing as Deb thought it might. They have natural hot springs bubbling out of the mountainside with a couple of pools and they also have a campground, but we opted to keep going and look for one of those beautiful Forest Service campgrounds of which there are plenty around here.

Just before Bishop we turned west and took Rt 168 about 16 miles until it ended at Lake Sabrina. A beautiful mountain lake with snow capped mountains and a campground nearby. Lots of fishermen up here and a few campers so we had our choice of sites. This place is only about half full.

Then supper, reading and bed. OK, I had a little nap..

Odometer = 16246