We started looking for a new place over a month ago, but in the past week we finally honed in on two finalists.  I think we have a winner, but it won’t be written in stone until Tuesday or Wednesday.  It looks like we’ll be moving into LA, to a house with a pool.

I’ll write more and include some background info about the final straw that broke our will to stay here when the snake in the condo beside us dished out more than we could stand.

This weekend college football finally started.  I’ve been excited about this since January, just after the BCS Championship.  Unfortunately my cable provider (Time Warner Cable) delivered all the ESPN GamePlan channels except for 722, which just happened to be the one showing Bama’s season opener!  I was pissed off about that, but you can’t win ‘em all.

I hope you all have a wonderful Labor Day, I know I’ll be enjoying a day without labor!

Today I ran errands with my dad before we went to see The Expendables, which is an old-school action flick only better because it has every past and present action star except Jean-Claude Van Damme.  I loved Arnold, Sly, Dolph, Bruce and Jean-Claude when I was growing up.  Bloodsport, Rambo – First Blood, Total Recall, Die Hard, and so many more that I watched with my buddies and then quoted every line with a cuss word for the next 3 months, over and over.  Yippie ki-yay!

Jean and Elnora spent all day in LA – Hollywood and Santa Monica.  They’re on their way home right now.

Well, here’s the last bit from our trip up into the Sierras:

We had made reservations at a little place near Crowley Lake, thinking it would be a cabin, but it ended up being a little motel that had a cabin motif in each room.  It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.  Our room was enormous, with a large bed, two couches, a big dining room table and a kitchen downstairs, then two rooms with a total of 6 beds upstairs.  Tons of wood paneling, moose and deer heads galore, a talking salmon on a wooden board, and a bunch of other woodsy kitsch.  The lady that ran the place was extremely nice and our room was beyond comfortable, more so after two nights of sleeping on the ground in the freezing cold. 

We hadn’t seen a single bear at our campground or in Yosemite, but the lady said that every night around 10-11pm a bear goes along the road and stops at each place to try and get into their trash cans.  She said we’d know he was out there when we heard lots of dogs barking.  Sweet!  We may actually see a bear.

The first evening my dad wanted to read and relax, so Jean and I took the car and tried to head down to the marina on Crowley Lake to find out about renting a pontoon boat the following morning.  It was probably 5:15pm when we got to this little kiosk in the center of the road, and we never made it to the marina because the guy wanted something like $9 for a “day use fee”.  I wasn’t about to pay $9 to drive another 2000 yards and ask about paying a ridiculous fee to rent a boat.  Crowley Lake was easily the least picturesque lake was saw – not any vegetation within a 5 mile radius of the lake, so it looked stark and hot.  We only saw 2 boats on it over the next two days, so it appears that most people consider it a waste of time.  Avoid this place if you’re in the area.

Instead of Crowley Lake, we hopped on the 395 and started heading north to Mammoth to check out the town, but we got sidetracked on the way.  We pulled off the highway and drove towards the mountains to visit Convict Lake.  If Crowley Lake was the ugliest lake, Convict Lake was the most beautiful.  Convict Lake was named because a bunch of convicts from Nevada fled there and had a shootout with a sheriff and his posse.  My favorite part was the dramatic landscape – an emerald lake surrounded on 3 sides by mountains.

The next day we all 3 went into Mammoth and tried to go see Devil’s Postpile, but the parks department has setup a scam where you’re forced to pay for a shuttle when a few years ago you weren’t.  They figured out a way to drive revenue up, but we didn’t bite.  We decided to try and see a movie, so we drove around looking for a theater in Mammoth before using our trusty GPS to guide us an hour south to Bishop.  Bishop does have a theater, but it only has a single screen and only has a showing at night, so instead we ate some great sandwiches at Raymond’s Deli instead.

After lunch we headed back north and relaxed at our “cabin”.  Before Big Brother came on, we headed up to Mammoth yet again, in search of a grocery store.  When we finally found one we were blown away that a swanky movie theater was in the same parking lot.  Our stupid GPS had led us on a 120+ mile wild goose chase when we were within 2 miles of this theater to start with.  We got our groceries and went back to the room and watched Big Brother and a few shows after that before hearing dogs going crazy.  Jean and I tried looking out the windows for a bear, but we never saw one.

The next morning we woke up, packed the car and headed home.  Our trip up into the Sierra Nevada was fun and we definitely need to return and continue exploring the area.

Here are the photos:

After we left the campground we drove north up the 395 to Mono Lake (pronounced “Moe-no”).  Mono Lake is really old, really salty and alkaline, it’s in danger of going away completely because of the LA basin, and it’s full of these odd looking white towers of calcium carbonate called tufa.

When we got to the parking lot at the “South Tufa” area, it was around 80% full already.  We walked over to the little ranger’s shanty at the top of the walkway down to the lake where we were met by an older man and woman who were both rangers.  The guy announced to a small group of us visitors that there wouldn’t be any fee to see the lake that day because all federal parks were celebrating “back to school”.  We’d heard the same thing the day before when a ranger in Yosemite said we were lucky to get there on Friday because on Saturday it would be a zoo with all the people showing up to take advantage of the free entrance.

Besides getting in for free, the two rangers said they’d be leading a free tour in about 5 minutes.  It turns out that the two rangers are a married couple and were married at Mono Lake decades ago.  With a group of around 10-12 people, we slowly followed the rangers down the pathway to the lake, stopping every hundred yards or so for an informational speech.  We learned that the tufa are formed when a spring bubbles up under the water and the carbonate and calcium mixture precipitate out the structures you see standing everywhere.  The thing that was most surprising to me was how small the lake was compared to what it once was.  The rangers explained that tufa don’t grow past the surface of the water, so all the 10+ feet tufa you see standing about 200 yards from the water were below the lake 75 years ago.  The rangers said this massive lake is only about a tenth of its former size.

We were told the reason for the drastic change in level – Los Angeles.  LA bought up water rights from the rest of the state, including the Owens Valley, back in the early part of the 20th century.  LA built aqueducts and started siphoning water away from Mono Lake by diverting the streams that fed it to a reservoir that would supply drinking water to Los Angelenos.  In 1994 LA was sued and lost, and now they have to divert some water back and let the lake rise to a sustainable level.  I took a picture of the plaque describing this, and it’s shown below.

Another interesting feature of Mono Lake is the alkali fly.  The shore surrounding Mono Lake is COVERED in these tiny flies, and whenever you get close to them they swarm away from you.  You can actually hear the swarm buzzing away, and I got some video of my dad chasing them around.  Lots of birds enjoy dining on these flies; I got a picture of a little bird landing in the sea of flies and they all buzzed away from it and left a flyless ring around the bird.

After we finally left Mono Lake, we headed further north to see what was billed as the best ghost town in the west.  I was skeptical that it would be sickeningly touristy.  I expected the panning for gold shtick, candle making and all the sorts of things you see in places like Williamsburg, VA.  I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking for Bodie, but I will say that it ain’t easy to get to (way off the 395 and about 3 miles of crappy washboard dirt road) and it isn’t touristy or fake.  The buildings are simply being maintained and the rangers keep them from slipping into a further state of decay, but it’s no Disney park with reconstructed buildings and shows.  They were having a festival the day we went, so there were some locals walking around in period dress, a watermelon eating race, horses and buggies, and some food vendors, but normally when you visit it’s just the buildings.

After Bodie we headed back south on 395 and stopped in Lee Vining to get Jean a t-shirt, then we stopped in Mammoth Lakes to look around and get lunch.  We’d been to Mammoth the previous evening so dad could buy a blanket.

We made it to our cabin/motel late in the afternoon (around 5pm), which was just west of Crowley Lake.  More on this place in the final blog about our trip…

Here are the pictures from Mono Lake, Bodie and a few others from our third day in the Sierras:

Once we dusted off the cobwebs and climbed out of our tents on our first full day in the mountains, we admired the sun rising over June Lake just below our campsite and then took off for Yosemite.  We stopped at the little country store on the corner of the June Lake Loop Road and 395 to top off our gas and grab breakfast.  Breakfast was expensive (gas too!) but we were all set after that.

The road leading into the park was only about 10 minutes north of where we were camping.  The road leading from 395 westwards over the Sierras and through the park is California State Route 120, but known in the area as the Tioga Pass Road.  The Tioga Pass is the highest highway pass in California at 9,943ft.  During the Winter this road isn’t open because they get so much snow, so the only way into the park is from the western side until late Spring or early Summer when the Tioga Pass Road is finally plowed for the first time.  When I say they get snow, I mean SNOW!  On average the area gets 33+ feet of snow a year, but a ranger we met said last winter they got something like 43 feet.  I can see why they wouldn’t bother plowing…

We went up and over the Tioga Pass, which happens to be the exact point where the Eastern entrance into the park is, so we stopped at the booth and paid our $20 for a car pass that would last a week.  We got into the park pretty early because we had a lot to cover and wanted to beat the crowds.  We drove along the Tioga Pass Road through the park, stopping every couple of miles to take in the beautiful lakes, amazing lookouts and dense pine forests.  The lake and stream waters were perfectly clear, and one lake even had early morning fog rolling along the surface.  I loved how the surrounding mountains and trees were reflected off of the still lake waters, and the sky was so clear and blue all day long.

We didn’t see any bears, but dad did point out a deer at one point.  I hate deer, especially when I’m driving.  The Eastern side of the park is gorgeous, but the majority of the superlative sights are on the Western side near the Yosemite Valley.  We entered the park around 7:30am, but it took us around 3 hours to get to the main section because it’s a wide park and we kept on stopping.

We took in the two main attractions, Bridalveil Falls and El Capitan.  Bridalveil was very impressive even though we were there late in the season.  I’d heard that this year was special because recently the snow pack in the Sierras has been light and the waterfalls in Yosemite are usually dried up or barely a trickle by mid-August, but there was plenty of water on Bridalveil.  El Capitan is a gigantic granite rock with a flat face that is the holy grail for American rock climbers.  I’ve even seen Jack Osbourne climb it.  We looked through our binoculars for about 30 minutes, trying to find tiny climbers on El Capitan’s face, but we never saw any.

After climbing up to Bridalveil and then walking around the valley in front of El Capitan we drove further into the Yosemite Valley.  Yosemite Falls was barely a trickle, the parking lot for the Yosemite Village visitor’s center was a zoo, the Sierra Club people inside the LeConte Memorial Lodge were nice (but not as informative as Huell Howser), and Jean picked up some nice stickers for us in Curry Village.

I can see why Ansel Adams loved Yosemite so much – it is spectacular.

On the way back to the Eastern side of the park, we pulled over and made sandwiches and then walked back in the woods to a clear stream to eat lunch.  By the time we got out of the park and back to our campsite it was about 4pm.  My dad went down to June Lake for a dip while Jean and I went to the campground’s store to take showers.  The shower at Oh Ridge is seriously lacking, but it felt good to be clean.  We also picked up some firewood and went back to camp.

I stayed up late with my dad that night, putting wood on the fire slowly so it wouldn’t flame up too much because there was no light pollution and the stars were fantastic.  We both saw several meteors on what happened to be the best day of 2010 to view the Perseid Meteor Shower.  On the really bright and long meteors you could hear other people around the campground going “woooooooowww!”.  When we finally ran out of wood we hit the sack, and luckily it was much warmer than the previous night.

Here are some of our photos from Yosemite:

The 395 is the main road that goes up through California on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  Just past our destination for this trip the 395 goes to Lake Tahoe, then Carson City and Reno, Nevada.  I was a little nervous about driving up the 395 because I can remember stories my buddies at work told me a few years ago (when the seed for this trip was planted) about how dangerous this highway is because there isn’t a median and there are lots of head-on collisions.  In fact, there was a big crash that killed 3 people from Riverside just last week.

Luckily, and as is usually the case, reality is very different than stories you hear or your own imagination.  The southern part of the road, from Victorville to about Ridgecrest, could be dangerous because there isn’t really a median and both you and opposite traffic are both going about 65-75mph with a foot or two between you.  Someone looking down at their cell phone or radio could easily cause a major disaster.  Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic and after Ridgecrest (or somewhere near there) the road split and most of the time there was actually a huge median, like 50-60 feet of trees or grass.

The drive up took a while because we made a few stops.  I stopped for some “fresh” (overpriced) beef jerky, some gas, and we hit two of the sights I really wanted to see, Manzanar and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.

Manzanar is a former Japanese Internment Camp from WWII, and the Bristlecones are the oldest trees on the planet.  I’ve been wanting to visit both since a friend told me about them 3-4 years ago.  I’d never heard of either before moving to California, although I was aware of the Japanese Internment Camps from my middle school US History class (thank you Mr. Kennerly).  Sadly, most Americans have never heard of Manzanar.

Shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, FDR signed Executive Order 9066 which allowed the government to restrict people from certain areas.  The West Coast became off limits to the Japanese because the public was worried that they would commit acts of treason or sabotage because they were sure to be loyal to their ancestral lands.  The outcry was loud enough for FDR to act, but to look at it 70 years on shows that it was as ridiculous as thinking that Americans of German or Italian extraction would side with Hitler or Mussolini.  The majority of the Japanese people sent to the camps were actually American citizens.  It was wrong on so many levels, and the short movie they showed us made me really sad.

I hated seeing the images of these children, American children, wearing little powdered wigs like George Washington and waving American flags around to celebrate the 4th of July while being held in some sort of prison.  The spirit of these people was amazing, but their resilience and industrious abilities were just as impressive.  They were forced to leave their homes and all their possessions within 48 hours, spend 3 years behind a military guarded fence in the middle of nowhere, then they were given a bus ticket and $25 and sent on their way after the war, yet they thrived while they were there.  They didn’t sit around and wither, instead they built elaborate gardens, started businesses, and improved their lot, even in the face of all the hatred projected at them from their fellow Americans.

Another sad part of the movie was about Sadao Munemori, who volunteered to be in the US military.  Sadao was killed in action and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor because he died when throwing himself on top of a German grenade to save the lives of two fellow US soldiers.  The government delivered his Medal of Honor to his mother, who was being held in Manzanar at that time…  This guy gave the ultimate sacrifice to our country and his own mother was being treated like a criminal because of her heritage.

If you’re ever anywhere near Manzanar, please visit it.  It’s a must see.

After Manzanar we drove up into the very high White Mountains to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, where a living tree named Methuselah is estimated to be 4700 years old.  That’s older than the pyramids in Egypt.  The road up there is steep and winds around all over the place, and it was on this section that I realized I never want a Chevy Impala because running at 3500rpm for about 15 minutes led the car to overheat.  Pathetic…

We stopped on the ride up to eat lunch.  Everything was feeling the pressure difference, including the mayo which exploded all over Jean’s hands when she opened it.  The Doritos bag was all puffed out and about to explode too.

We finally made it to the top (I crept along at like 20mph after the overheating incident), and we parked the car and headed down a trail to see these old trees.  We walked about a mile, and after taking some pictures we headed back.  You don’t know which tree is Methuselah because that refuse to post a sign on it, but that’s probably a good idea since I’m sure plenty of people would snap off toothpick souvenirs from the oldest living thing if they could.  The ranger told me that the Methuselah tree is on the 4 mile Methuselah Trail, and if you hike the entire thing and keep your eyes open you are sure to see it – you just won’t know which one it is!

The trees are impressive, mostly because they grow in what seems like it would be about as inhospitable as any terrain could be.  High altitude, crappy soil, windy, and so on.

After we left the Bristlecones we headed on to our campsite and setup our tents.  We camped at a place called “Oh Ridge”, on June Lake.  June Lake is actually one of several lakes on the June Lake Loop.  The lady at the campground guardshack that checked us in said our site (#35) was highly sought after because of the view.  She also said that they hadn’t seen a bear in the campground since April, so my dad was relieved.

Tomorrow I’ll try to post our second day of the trip, when we ventured into Yosemite.

Here are the pictures from our drive up the 395:

Sorry this blog took a while to post, but once again ipage (my webhost) had server problems and the page I use to log in to the blog was unavailable.  IPAGE SUCKS!

The weather was perfect up there, the landscape was magnificent, the rental car sucked, we never saw a bear, the streams and lakes were beautiful but freezing, and basically we had a great time.

After living in Southern California for almost 5 years, I did’t really realize just how bad our air quality is.  I know it’s terrible; I read the reports you do.  During the summers you’re lucky if you can get a clear view of the mountains that are regularly spectacular during the winter.  The clearest example of how filthy our air is came while on this trip – we went from a smoggy view of the San Gabriels to a crystal clear view for tens of miles of the Sierra Nevadas.

The LA Basin has millions of cars spewing emissions into the air for hours and hours each day, plus the area has a fare share of forest fires each year.  We didn’t pass through more than 10 towns during the entire 5-6 hour drive, and most of those towns had a population under 1,000.  Only two of them broke 3,500: Bishop has around 3,600 people and Mammoth Lakes has around 5,300.  With so few cars, basically no industry, and mountain ranges on the eastern and western sides, not much pollution exists.  I supposed they have some forest fires, but the majority of what we saw was mostly scrub bushes (sage, etc).  Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of pine forests, but I’d say 80% of the land we saw didn’t have a thing on it taller than 3ft.

I’ve copied all the pictures over to my laptop (I didn’t bring the laptop with me because I wanted to totally disconnect for a few days), and they are amazing.  I’ll try to post some tomorrow.  The highlights of what we saw are: the oldest living thing on earth, one of the most stunning National Parks I’ve ever visited, the site for one of the darkest moments in our country’s recent history, a place considered to be the most intact ghost town in America, a natural wonder the Los Angeles almost destroyed, and more picturesque alpine lakes than you could imagine.  Check out the links; stories and photos will follow soon…

Lonely Planet describes them as, “With fierce granite mountains standing watch over high-altitude lakes, the eastern spine of California throws up an exquisite topographical barrier from north to south.  When the Sierra Nevada and White Mountain ranges finally drop back down to earth at the basin of Nevada and Death Valley, almost a dozen peaks have topped out over 14,000ft.”

We’ll see the oldest living things on earth (older than the pyramids in Egypt), a memorial to one of the most shameful periods in America’s recent past, a really old lake with tufa, Yosemite National Park, the tallest mountain in the lower 48, an old west ghost town, more lakes than you can shake a stick at, and hopefully plenty of wildlife.  I can’t wait!

Pictures to come soon…

We’ll be seeing some pretty interesting things, but I’ll hold off until later this week when I have more time to detail each of them.  I’m headed to bed now because once again I’ll be up at 4am tomorrow.