Tired from our fun whirlwind tour of Northern California, Storm and I returned to Lone Pine, CA to retrieve our coach from storage and rest up a couple of days. Dean and Terrie headed back toward the east and I did not envy them that extra week or more of travel. When Storm and I were sufficiently revived, we went out in search of things to see around Lone Pine.
Turns out most of the B movie westerns (and many later movies like Ironman) were filmed (or partially filmed) in the Alabama Hills surrounding Lone Pine. Quoting from the BLM website: “The hills were named after the C.S.S. Alabama, a Confederate warship responsible for wreaking havoc during the Civil War. Prospectors sympathetic to the Confederate cause named their mining claims after the Alabama and eventually the name stuck.”
We took the Movie Road tour through the hills and tried to imagine the Lone Ranger riding through. We also made it up to Whitney Portal where hikers begin their hike to the summit of Mount Whitney (14,505) for lunch and some waterfall pictures. Every road that we chose in this area resulted in curvy, fragrant, breath-taking rides to higher elevations and intriguing forests.
Boulder Creek Resort was the campground we selected for our stay here and it has been one of the best we have chosen. Nice sites, great people (both the campground folks and the campers), a pool, clean laundry and a great rec room. The only downside for us was that we were not able to stock our fridge before staying here because our camper was powered down in storage. The closest “real” grocery store is in Bishop 60 miles away – so stock up before you setup here.
Just wanted to check with you guys (for future reference for us when we travel)….is putting your RV in storage better than renting a spot in a campground to go travel in your car? What do you do with refrigerator items when in storage? We had not even thought of doing that like when traveling up through the State of Washington – so much traffic for RV & car together – we wanted to go back to the Alabama Hills where it was so peaceful. Loving your beautiful pics and blogs. take care, sandy d
Hi Sandy,
I think storage was a good idea for us this time, but the refrigerator did not work out as we had hoped. Boulder Creek charged us $2 per day to store the RV (the price was right!). We did not leave any really perishable food in the fridge and we hoped that the batteries would keep the LP detector going for 10 days so that the LP would power the fridge. We almost made it – the batteries ran down the same day that we returned but we could tell that things had warmed too much so we threw away the condiments, etc that were in there. We learned that our coach is smart enough to turn on the generator automatically and recharge the batteries while in storage, but we are not yet smart enough to program it to do that. I agree that Lone Pine is worth a return visit – thanks for following us!
Deb