Highway 395

I slept soundly over night. Nothing got me up but the sun. I gassed up and started my drive. The most southern part of Highway 395 outside of Hesperia where the route begins isn’t all that impressive. This is mostly a dry area of power plants, ghost towns, sun-burned small homes, power lines and truck traffic as it bisects the Mohave desert. Joshua trees spot the desert and the low-lying hills to the east hug the fog in the early morning, but scenic this road certainly is not, at least not here. One has to look closely at the finer detail to see pictoresque, unique objects because the colors all blend into one rather dull shade of sand.

It got hot fast here. My van registered a low tire but I didn’t check it out any further. I called Darlene as I neared the ghost town of Orchalla. She had never heard of it. “You have to stop in Bishop and see that photography gallery!” but once I got into town, didn’t see it and drove on.

The transition from desert to mountains is not noticable at first because the northern edge of the Mohave desert lingers here. Eventually the hills become sharper and the wide valley narrowed, until a distinctive river formsd between the highway and the nearby mountain rainge. Cottonwoods, always an arbiter of underground water, popped up as well. Snow topped the higher peaks, but the peaks still remain treeless. Even at 4000 feet the high ground is treeless, a reminder that one is still in the desert.

I stopped for an hour at the old Manzanar Japanese internment camp. In 1942 this now little-known camp was one of ten internment camps for Japanese Americans. At its peak there were 11,070 Japanese-Americans kept here, most of them who had been born IN this country. Barbed wire surrounded this camp and a rigid daily schedule was adhered to. The last Japanese left in November 1945 and all that remains now of Manzanar is the dance hall, which is now the museum, and a make-shift guard tower one sees from the highway. Allegedly Italian and Germans were also held here in much smaller numbers, but the museum is "still working on" that subject.

I listened to the videos and reflected on this country's unfair social practices as I walked along the displays. I had never heard of Manzanar until I watched Ken Burn's recent documentary on our national parks. I wanted to check out this site on my own and I am glad I did. There were Asians in the crowd as they silently walked along the displays; I wonder what their thoughts were on this place.

I quietly drove on after my short visit. This valley is hot, dusty and windy in the summer and unbearably cold in the winter. Without water from the mountain creeks to irrigate from, this would be unsuitable for farming as well.

Lone Pine, Big Pine and Bishop were the three decent towns along Hwy 395. Mount Whitney's base rose from Lone Pine to the west (you can't actually see the peak from there) but the terrain didn’t start to rise until north of Bishop, when barren mountain peaks gave way to red fir-studded crags. Now this was the stuff that perked me up! These were all tourist towns, popular with both PCT hikers and motorcyclists.

My goal now was to get to Mammoth Lakes and drop off a resupply package for myself at Reds Meadow, where we'll be at on 18 July. This required me to take a park shuttle that meandered down and up a steep park road with views of the Minaret Peaks, Devil’s Posthole and Reds Meadow. This area is rife with avalanches in the winter, as the driver pointed out several blown-away mountain sides as we drove on. I got off at Reds Meadow, paid my $9 storage fee and hiked down to Rainbow Falls and then continued on to Posthole and Minaret Falls, adding another five miles today to my day hikes. There were quite a few people on the wide trails today. A 1992 fire burned a lot of the top trees near the waterfall and no new growth seemed to take over here, creating an open, exposed area that seemed quite hot even at 4pm as I started this hike.

I made it back to the 6:30pm shuttle, on which three Marylander students came on who are hiking the JMT as well. They started on 30 June and are hiking 8-9 miles a day. “We’ve hiked over 100 side miles already” said the man in front of me. When they learned that I was from AZ the man across from me asked me “What is it you Arizonans hate about Mexicans?” referring to that SB1070 law. I explained that it wasn’t against Mexicans, it was against the drug runners and smugglers who had been taking advantage of Arizona’s lax laws for too long. The border crime has simply gotten out of hand. I seem to have convinced him that the SB1070 is not meant to be a racist law, but people can and do see racism in this law, especially if they don't live in Arizona. Since California fortified its border south of San Diego, the illegals that were flooding the state in the 1980s and 1990s simply moved the crossing points further east, to Arizona, where border enforcement was always intermittent at best until recently.

Dinner once again was at a Carl's Jr where I also sat down to write my blog notes and download pics. The town of Mammoth Lakes was scenic enough, even genuine, but it was getting cold now at the 8000' elevation and I needed to get downhill where it was warmer, for the night. I found a spot in Lee Vining, with a view of Mono Lake, for the night. A moonless night kept this a dark but starry night. My plan is to get up at sunrise and watch the sun rise over Mono Lake. The color schemes allegedly are a photographer's dream.