“What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.” George Bernard Shaw
A couple months ago our friend Angela from Alabama e-mailed us – “What are y’all up to Thanksgiving week? I am trying to figure out something fun to do.”
Um, we don’t even know what we’re doing next week, so – no plans, why, what’s up???
Long story short, Angela flew in for the week, spent a day and a half in Oakland with a friend, then arrived at our house noonish Monday. After discussion (we still didn’t know what we were going to do together), we all four (me, Carol, Angela and the Droid, more on the Droid later) packed into the BFT and headed for Lone Pine, CA, in the Owens Valley and near the southern tip of the Sierra Nevada.
We made it all the way to Casa de Fruta and stopped for dried fruit and nuts (this is California, after all; we embrace our fruit and nuttiness) and the first folly occurred. Back at the BFT, it wouldn’t start. Open the hood, look around like there was some big revelation awaiting, stand around waiting for it to cool some more then it fired off. I assured all that this would be a “one-time occurrence” – as if I knew – and we headed on down the road.
Arriving late in Lone Pine, we camped overnight in the Tuttle Creek Campground and arose the next morning to the sight of the Alabama Hills and the Sierra crest. Not bad. We chose to get breakfast in town, checked out the visitor center, then headed into the Alabama Hills where we sought out the Mobius Arch. I thought of all the times we’ve been in the Alabama Hills and not bothered to find it – now it will be a must do whenever we’re there. We then went off to find some moderate rock climbs; had some fun on the Leaning Tower of Pizza, then headed over to the Shark Fin. Our timing was great, we got some nice lighting, the climb was awesome and thanks to Angela, we got some pictures that Carol and I couldn’t have gotten on our own.
We had intended to hike the lower part of the Whitney trail the next day, but after some discussion, we headed for Bishop, and went and found a hot spring to soak in. Hot spring – this turns out to be a favored activity for Angela. We hit the hot springs three nights in a row and tried during daylight one day – but more on that later. So we’re in the hot spring; the air temperature is below freezing and Angela gets out to go get wine and the Droid. Wine and the Droid in hand, Angela shows us the star maps on the Droid, so we were fully entertained watching the stars, moon, planets and figuring out where everything was. A nice evening. All good things come to an end and when we got out of the hot spring and found stiff, frozen towels, that was – well, let’s just go with character-building. We went off and to find a campground, found Convict Lake closed for the season, McGee Creek closed for the season and finally wound up camped at the Pleasant Valley campground.
We got up the next morning to head up to Lake Sabrina for a hike. We were so flexible that we didn’t know what hike we were doing until we came to the fork in the trail that either went to George Lake or Blue Lake; somehow a decision was made and we wound up at George Lake. Beautiful hike, beautiful day, back at the BFT, what’s next? “How about another hot spring?” Yeah, OK, we drove on by last night’s hot spring, went and found an alternative already occupied, then spent a good hour trying to find another. Driving along in the dark through the sagebrush on roads that didn’t appear on my handheld GPS, Angela fired up the Droid and Google Maps, voila, there’s the road we’re on. It turns out the road called out by the guidebook had been closed and we had to find the back way in, which we did with the Droid. Awesome. The hot spring was really isolated and the input water was so hot there was a regulator valve – turn it on, unbelievably hot water flows in, turn it off and live. An awesome evening, more wine, more stars, planets and the moon and – the inevitable “getting out of the hot spring into the below-freezing air” drill. More character building, but tonight we were smart enough not to get our towels wet and frozen.
We decided to camp in the sagebrush relatively near the hot spring, planning to go back to a hot spring the next morning (go figure, right?). It was so cold when we parked, we didn’t set up Angela’s tent instead opting to all sleep in the campah. Good choice, it was bitterly cold – many of our water bottles froze overnight.
Next morning (Thanksgiving Day) I was making coffee with slush and heating up slush to melt ice. That’s too cold in my book. Everybody up, we went back to the hot spring, wandered around looking at stuff for a while (we’d never seen the area in the daylight) and then went out to the hot spring. Oh, man, it’s too hot to get into. Someone must have left the valve open. We headed for another spring and found someone already there, experienced and partook in a little weirdness (at one point Mr. “Baked, not Fried” got on Carol about “being open to new experiences” and I’m thinking Dude, you do not want to get in Carol’s face), then made our escape up the road to Obsidian Dome.
Fun Fact – “Obsidian has been used in cardiac surgery, as well-crafted obsidian blades have a cutting edge many times sharper than high-quality steel surgical scalpels, with the edge of the blade being only about 3 nanometres wide”, according to Wikipedia. Whatever, it’s a cool place. We rounded up our time at Obsidian Dome by making our first Thanksgiving turkey.
We headed up the road to Mono Lake (pronounced Mō-Nō) to the South Tufa, took a Tufa walk, then made Thanksgiving dinner at a picnic table just off the parking lot. We had planned on apple and onion stuffing, pumpkin pie and wine, but Angela had suggested sweet potato pie instead, and, miraculously, we found a sweet potato pie (and organic, sulfite-free wines) at the Manor Market in Bishop – check them out if you’re in town – lots of interesting beers, wines and foods. Back to dinner – the sweet potato pie was just awesome – perfectly spiced; I gave it a 9 out of 10, 10 being my mom’s sour cream raisin pie.
Angela proposed moteling it that night; Carol and I were not averse given last night’s freeze fest; a quick Droid session and we had a room booked for the night. This enabled us to enjoy yet another long soak in a hot spring on the way to Bishop. Bliss.
Next morning we visited the Mountain Light gallery in Bishop, always a treat and inspirational as well. Then we headed for South Lake and a Bishop Pass hike, but found the road closed (a storm was blowing in). We headed instead for the Owens Gorge and wound up hiking down into the gorge for a ways. Saw lots of climbers, scouted out a few new climbs, did some sunset photography then – started working our way home.
We camped near Fossil Falls; woke up to rain and then got snowed on on our way back through Walker Pass. We drove back through a big windstorm and arrived at home midafternoon. Angela got up and departed for the airport at 4 a.m. the next morning. I was sure I’d hear her getting up, but slept through the whole thing.
All the pictures are here. Thanks to Angela and Carol for sharing their pictures, too. Pictures on SmugMug are at full resolution; if you run a screen show SmugMug will figure out the maximum resolution of your monitor and deliver the best possible picture.
Thanks, Angela, for sharing your Thanksgiving week with us and for broadening our horizons. It’s so much fun for us to show our friends the places we love.
Namaste.
~Rick
P.S. – the BFT never again failed to start…
P.P.S – Having a Droid in the car takes all the drama out of debates about who’s right about most any subject – you can just look up the right answer. This might have caused a behavior change for me, from “It’s this” to “As I remember, it’s this”. Ha.
P.P.P.S – as for “inspired follies” – there’s a list, but – whatever. It’s all good, and it is what it is at the end of the day…
P.P.P.P.S. Topical joke: Q: What’s the difference between a car and a golf ball? A: Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards…