Lone Pine Movie Museum,

Lone Pine is home to the Beverly & Jim Rogers Museum of Lone Pine film history.

 

Part of the mural on the side of the museum.

 

The museum contains lots of exhibits about the history of film making in the area.

 

Errol Flyn wore this coat while making the film ‘Kim’.

One of the movie posters in the museum.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto were in the building.

Parts of the Star Wars films and Gladiator were made in the Alabama Hills.

 

We also watched part of Tremors an old Sci Fi film.   I’d never heard of it before, but it seemed to be about a town terrorised by giant earth worms.   It was probably quite scary when it was made, but I have to admit the bit I watched in the museum made me smile.

 

If you’re in Lone Pine it’s definitely worth visiting the Movie Museum.

 

Have fun, we are!

Looking for Kings Canyon

It was a lovely sunny morning as we drove into Sequoia heading for Kings Canon.   We stopped at Hospital Rock and looked at the grinding holes.

 

This time I did take some photographs of the beautiful views from lookouts on the way up to the giant sequoias.

As we drove higher we could see clouds hanging around the tops of the mountains.

When we arrived at the Lost Grove of sequoias it was bright but partly misty.

As we left the grove we ran into some of the cloud/mist, it wasn’t much and

by the time we arrived at the Kings Canyon overlook we were back in the sunshine.

Although a road goes part-way into Kings Canyon most of the park is wilderness, however at the moment a large part of the park is closed because of the Rough fire. 

After we left the overlook we drove straight into really thick cloud/mist,

this time the mist/cloud didn't go away and as we could barely see in front of us we decided to give the General Grant tree and visitor centre a miss and headed down into the sunshine. 

 

The difference in the weather in just driving up and over the mountain was amazing.

 

Have fun, we are!

Sequoia National Park

From Lone Pine, we moved to Visalia to visit Sequoia National Park.   After the quiet of the Eastern Sierra it was a bit of a shock to the senses when we hit all the traffic along Highway 99!

 

Once you get out of Visalia, it’s a nice drive along Highway 198 through Three Rivers to the park entrance.

 

Our first stop was Tunnel Rock, at one time the road passed under the rock, you can still see the yellow lines that marked the middle of the road.

We followed the twisting, road as it wound high up into the mountains.   Our first view of sequoias was at the museum, which it turned out, had once been a bar!   From there we followed the road to Crescent Meadow.  

 

On the way we stopped at The Parker Group, named after a Cavalry Officer who commanded troops protecting the sequoias.   Every summer from 1891 to 1913 mounted troops rode 300 miles from San Francisco Presidio to protect the trees.

I took this photograph looking up into the branches and still didn’t get all the tree in.

This is the base of the same tree.   The bark is very soft to touch and reminded me of very old, soft linen

Further along the road we came to Tunnel Log.  Tunnel Log fell on 4 December 1937, it’s 275 ft long with a base diameter of 21 ft.   The tunnel through the log is 8ft high and 17 ft wide.

 

Even so I still watched carefully as DB drove through.

As we parked at Crescent Meadow we saw a deer nibbling contentedly on some bushes a few feet away.

And we definitely took notice of this sign before we set out on the short hike to Tharps Log.   I really didn't want to come back and find a bear in the truck!

Our hike took us around Crescent Meadow, described by John Muir as a ‘Gem of the Sierras’.

Tharp was the first non-Indian to live in the forest and made his home in a fallen Sequoia tree.

I thought the window design was particularly ingenious.

This beautiful meadow is just in front of Tharp’s Log.

On our way back we took a short side trip through the forest to visit the Chimney Tree.

It was a kinda weird feeling when I stood inside the tree.

After retrieving our cooler from the bear proof locker we drove over to see the General Sherman Tree.   The tree is over 2,200 years old, is 275 ft high, has a circumference of 103 ft and weighs 1,385 tons.

 

Apparently if the trunk were filled with water it would contain enough water for 9,844 baths, that’s one bath a day for 27 years!   It’s a beautiful tree.      

Have fun, we are!

Whitney Portal Road

The views were incredibly impressive as we drove along Whitney Portal Road on a beautiful sunny morning.   We had nothing planned for when we arrived, we just wanted to see what was up there.

 

The higher we got the more impressive the views became.

The sun hadn’t reached inside the portal when we arrived, it was at least 20 degrees colder than the valley below and definitely not t-shirt and shorts weather!   My first stop was the general store to pick up a couple of very welcome hot chocolates!

This beautiful waterfall cascaded into the Portal right by where we parked.

Looking back into Whitney Portal as we drove out, what a beautiful view.

Looking over the Alabama Hills to the Owens Valley as we drove down.

Have fun, we are!

Independence, California

A short drive along Highway 395 took us to the small town of Independence to visit the Eastern Sierra Museum.   It’s a small museum with many interesting things relating to both the ancient and recent history of the Owens Valley.   It’s definitely somewhere we could return to and find things we missed on this trip.

 

We also took a walk through the Native Plant Garden at the rear of the museum, where we had a good view of the High Sierra.

 

I’m not sure what this bird is, but it posed long enough for me to take a photograph.

We also took the short walking tour through town. 

The Commanders House was built at Fort Independence in 1873 to replace adobe buildings destroyed in an earthquake.   Commanding Officers lived in the house until the fort was abandoned in 1877.  The building was bought at auction in 1883 for $345.00 by V G Thompson.

 

In 1889 it was sold again to Mr S A Densmore who moved it to its present position.   The City of Los Angeles bought the house in 1928 and it remained a private residence until 1961.

 

In 1968 the house was leased to Inyo County and is now operated by the Eastern California Museum.

The beautiful Inyo County Courthouse was built in 1921 in the Classical Revival style by architect William H Weeks.   It is the only example of it’s kind in the Owens Valley.   In 1998 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Winnedumah Hotel was built in the 1920’s and had a Grand Re-opening sign outside when we visited.

This lovely building was once a restaurant, and now has a for lease outside.

Main Street.

This is the old hospital building.

Mary Austin began her writing career in 1900 with the publication of a book of essays about the Owens Valley.   Her first book published in 1903 “The Land of Little Rain” which is still in print is considered a literary classic. 

 

This was her home when she lived in Independence.

Have fun, we are!

Picture Rocks and Movie Stars

One of the drives in Alabama Hills goes through a section of jumbled rocks called ‘picture rocks’ among them you can see rocks that resemble, bats, ghosts, horses and various other things.   The only one we actually recognised was the ‘Visible Man’ which is impossible to miss, as for the rest, well they’re out there, somewhere!

 

Mind you we were so entranced with the absolutely fabulous mountain views that we weren’t really looking for ghosts, horses etc in the rocks.

I think this is Mount Whitney peeping out of the clouds.

Some of the lovely views as we drove through the ‘picture rocks’ section of the Alabama Hills.

Once we’d given up on the ‘pictures’ we started looking for movie locations.   We found the marker showing where the epic film ‘Gunga Din’ was filmed in 1938.

The film starred Cary Grant, Dougals Fairbanks Jnr, Joan Fontaine, and Victor McLaglen with Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din the waterboy who wanted to be a solider.  

 

A marker at the entrance to Movie Flats Road names some of the many movies and TV productions produced there over the years, including High Sierra, How the West Was Won, Bonanza, Maverick and The Lone Ranger.

Some of the amazing rock formations in the Alabama Hills that we’ve probably seen in lots of films and TV shows we’ve watched over the years.

We had a fabulous day poking about among the rocks, although DB wasn’t particularly impressed with me calling ‘Hi Ho Silver’ while he was driving!

 

Have fun, we are!