Alabama Hills

This one was an adventure for us! I don’t think we’ve ever stayed in a dispersed camping area. It has recently changed so that you must stay only in designated sites, but it’s still pretty rustic. Definitely a memorable experience. In order to gear up for the unpredictability, we stopped along the highway in Bishop. This is the ‘big city’ out in these parts, and a good place to restock on groceries, as well as donuts. We joyfully discovered that yet another in the Schat’s Bakkery (not a typo) chain was located here. Richard had the dubious honor of going to check it out and choose something while I got a few groceries. He said it was completely overwhelming and sent me a video he took of just one of the sections. From his description, it has just about anything you can imagine in the way of baked goods. It also has an entire deli section that is bigger than all of Arcangeli in Pescadero. It was awfully hard for Richard to narrow it down to just a couple of donuts and a mini eclair. All were delicious.

To get to the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area, you start in Lone Pine and turn up Whitney Portal Road. From there you go uphill, toward the imposing wall of Sierras taking up the entire horizon. Eventually, you come to Movie Road and you turn right. It starts as a paved road, but quickly turns to packed sandy gravel. It’s a perfectly fine road to tow on, even if it is a little washboardy. You will see signs posted all over the place letting you know you can’t camp in the Day Use areas, only in designated marked campsites. We learned that this whole area used to be a free for all and it was getting trashed. We saw ample evidence of broken glass, but it also seems lots of effort has gone into cleaning the place up. One of the ways to preserve it was to limit where you could park and camp. Also, you need to get a permit, which you can do online, before you can camp there. We’re in favor, but it made finding a place exciting.

We drove out to a staging area where there were maps posted and information on exactly where you could find a space. There were sites listed in green as “accessible” and sites in orange as “4WD accessible.” They are not kidding. I expect to have nightmares about accidentally towing Dory down one of these roads and getting stuck. I was super worried about it, but it was all fine. There is not a great way to know how bad one of these sandy roads is going to be, but between the paper map and some other map apps, we could mostly tell which ways would be a bad idea. Richard was able to find a Forest Service guy who reassured him and said there were only a couple of dips on the road we wanted to try. Richard walked ahead and thought he found an ok site, but when I pulled Dory up to it, I rejected it for being way too tippy. We slowly moved along, hoping to not get stuck, until we came to the next green site. This one had a wide area where I could make a U turn to get out, and the road seemed adequately passable. I was way outside my comfort zone here, but we were able to do the best we could with leveling and unhitched. That meant we were committed.

There was absolutely no one else around at that point, so the worries over not being able to get a first come first serve site were yet again unfounded. One of the first things we wanted to do was get a better feel for the layout of the place, including what other sites might be workable with a trailer. There are signs posted on all the roads saying don’t take trailers on them, but the forest service guy said they were just cautionary and that he could get his 28 foot trailer in any of them. I’d like to see a 28 foot trailer get pulled up some of those 4WD roads, but maybe he just meant any of the green ones. It was also really hot, like in the low 90s, and we were curious about the other FS campgrounds farther away.

We left Dory in her crazy scenic pseudo site and got in the car to go explore. A few miles on the other side of Whitney Portal Road is Tuttle Creek campground. It gets very good reviews, but I was not particularly impressed. It has vault toilets, dumpsters for trash, and a “terrible” dump with a big ol’ curb. The sites were mostly more level than the BLM, but nothing was making me wish we’d gone there. On the plus side, I think the cell service would have been better.

Next we drove up to Lone Pine campground. This one is higher and was a little less hot. You have to reserve this place and there are only a handful of sites that would be big enough for a trailer. It sits down low in a valley off the road, and there are trees and greenery to offer some shade. There was water and trash, but no dump or cell service. The Whitney Portal Trail starts from that campground if you want a ridiculously hard hike. Again, nothing made me wish we’d stayed there, and I was gradually getting used to the wild wild west vibe of the area.

The last thing we did to maximize car AC time was drive back down to Lone Pine where there was cell service and the Museum of Western Film History that showcased all of the films that were shot in Alabama Hills. We are not big western movie fans, or we might recognize more of the titles. It seems many of the John Wayne movies were shot there, and series like the “Lone Ranger.” “Gunga Din” was one of the featured movies and there is a location where you can see where they built a bridge for one of the big scenes. That’s on our list of movies we need to watch now. A couple of the “Star Trek” movies, “Django Unchained,” and “Tremors” used this place too. All very fascinating and we did spend time the next day looking for the locations.

We did a good job killing time during the heat of the day using car AC, so we decided to head back up and make dinner. I will give us credit for carrying a lot of options for cooking. Under normal circumstances, I cook inside Dory. When it’s hot though, we have the grill and we have a camp stove for maximum flexibility. Our site had a big rock slab where we could set up the grill table and be in the shade. I made a lovely steak and panzanella salad, which we ate inside because of the crazy wind.

After dinner it was cool enough to go hiking around. We did the Arch trail, which is a really nice, well marked loop of a couple of miles. We also checked out a couple more of the green coded sites. I made notes on the map photo of which ones we could definitely rule out. I can imagine someone who loves off roading would get a kick out of this place, but I don’t see how any vehicle could make it over some of these pits and rocks. There were a good number of them though that would totally work. I circled those in green for any future return trips.

We were in the groove now, and went to bed without closing the privacy curtains. There was absolutely no one in sight and the stars were amazing to look at through Dory’s windows. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a bad idea because we did get someone coming in down the road a bit, just after midnight. The approach of a car’s headlights in the dark lights up every rock face in the area. And they took a while to get their tents set up, so the headlamp beams were coming right in whenever they looked in our direction. Plus, in the morning, the earliest rays of sunlight start hitting the mountain peaks around 5am. It was a romantic thought, but we for sure closed the curtains the next night.

We got a nice early start and hiked until around 2, before it got hot again. We checked out all of the movie locations and I took pictures in case we ever get around to watching them. You can see where they put concrete and reinforcing anchors into the rocks for the “Gunga Din” bridge.

Then we did a longer arch loop trail that covers the area to the east of Movie Road. This trail gives you a great view of Mt. Whitney and the crazy approach of Whitney Portal Road as it zig zags its way up the wall of granite. I don’t think I want to drive that section of road. We looked it up and the grade is about 14% in places, with an average grade of 9% and a climb of four thousand feet. Not something to be taken lightly, even in a car. Incidentally, Mt. Whitney is the highest point in the contiguous US, and lies only a hundred miles from Death Valley, the lowest point. All of this was created by the crashing of tectonic plates way back when. Pretty awe inspiring.

It was a great trail, but they sure don’t make it easy to spot the “Eye of Alabama” arch from the trail. We had to use gps and go off trail to find it. We saw a cool leopard lizard, and some Dr. Seuss looking plants called Desert Trumpets. There were cacti and tons of sagebrush everywhere. Very desert like, with an occasional oasis of cottonwoods running along a wash.

We got back to Dory and passed the hot hours of the afternoon in our Nemo chairs, tucked into a shady little rock cave. For dinner, I whipped up a stir fry with beef and bok choy. The trickiest part was keeping all the ingredients from blowing away before they got into the pot. I paired cooking time with margarita time and the day was perfect.

We didn’t know what to expect here, but ended up loving this place. It could have been less hot, but what do you expect in the middle of July? We’ve actually been super lucky with weather on this trip, so no complaining. Our purpose in coming was to learn what the deal was and explore. Check and check. Great stay!

Total miles from Convict Lake: 100.7, 17.5 mpg, 4 hours 24 min with stop in Bishop. Site 25 according to the posted map, but sites are not marked with numbers. BLM free campground, no reservations, must camp only in designated sites. Some sites are accessible only by 4WD on VERY rough high clearance roads. Be careful. No services, no dump, no water, no trash. Porta potties at beginning of Movie Road and in other FS campgrounds. Sadly frustrating cell signal. Could sometimes get something if you climb up on some rocks. Worse for Verizon than ATT, but both sucked. Dump in Tuttle Creek had big curb. No dump in Lone Pine campground. We ended up dumping in Paradise Cove campground at Lake Isabella.