ON THE ROAD AGAIN-A New Trip Begins-November 12, 2010

Well, off we go again! We are heading back on more or less the same trip that we did last year at this time...back to Richmond, Virginia to see the grandkids for Christmas, then down to Florida for a reunion with the group of folks that we went to Alaska with in 2008, before starting back toward home.

This time we are hoping the weather in the South will be better than last year so we can cross the country a bit further North and can see some different country.

Weather, of course, being what it is and not terribly predictable, means we are playing this trip very much by ear, adjusting our route according to the dictates of Mother Nature.

So last Friday we climbed into the motorhome and took off, as usual, hoping we hadn't forgotten anything critical. We are finding that at this age, remembering the myriad of details involved in travel is becoming more and more of a challenge.

We headed south on highway 97 for a few miles before turning east on Oregon highway 31 toward the California border. It's a rather pretty drive and one we have taken many times.

As we were driving down the valley toward Summer Lake, Don said, "What do you think this stuff is on the road? Looks to me like cow manure...but there's so much of it...!" I'm thinking, "How strange, it's all over the blacktop..."

About that time we came around a curve and came up behind a couple other vehicles, slowed by a full-fledged old-West-style cattle drive...right down the middle of the highway!

There were cowboys, horses, cow-herding dogs and about a hundred or so head of slow moving cattle just mosey-ing along.

Well, that explained the condition of the roadway! It took a little while to get around them all as some of the cows had no qualms about suddenly crossing the road right in front of us whenevery they felt like it.

We got a chuckle out of it especially when we parked that night and realized the tow car and the mudflaps on the motorhome all had a nice brown coating of cow...stuff... Ewwwww!

Notice the "stuff" on the road...

"Get along little doggies!"

After the excitement with the cattle drive we continued on, enjoying the views of the hills, sugar-dusted with snow.

I wanted to get a picture of Goose Lake, a very large lake that extends from above the southern border of Oregon down into California. I was quite surprised to find it completely dry, not a bit of water anywhere.

At least the cloudscape was impressive.

Next we began watching for the Shoe Tree. We have seen this many times over the years and have always wondered what the story is behind it.

The Shoe Tree is out in the middle of nowhere along highway 395 in Northern California. There is no population for miles and miles around. There aren't even cows around here. We assume it something the local teenagers have done, except where are the teenagers???

There is no town and there doesn't appear to be people of any age anywhere around, but the Shoe Tree is still a landmark that causes one to wonder. It just stands there hanging full of dozens and dozens of pairs of shoes.

We spent that night in Susanville, and then headed south again. We planned to spend the next couple days visiting Don's brother and sister-in-law, Dave and Melinda who live near Mammoth Lakes, California.

NOSTALGIA TIME

This is nostalgia time as Don and I have been driving this road back and forth dozens of times from Southern California where we used to live, to Oregon.

Don has been traveling this way for some 60 years, as his parents brought him up here many times to vacation and to fish. He also came up here numerous times with his good friend, Steve Campbell, on fishing and skiing trips.

Later on this is where Don taught his kids to fish, the same place Don's Dad had taugh him.

As we start getting into the High Sierras, we pass Mono Lake with the mountains in the background, then soon see Mammoth Mountain and more of the Sierra mountains. This is such a beautiful area.

We camped in Bishop, California and drove the car back up the mountain to spend time with Dave and Melinda. Dave and Melinda live in a little house beside a roaring mountain stream high up on the side of a mountain that overlooks Lake Crowley and off to the White Mountains in the far distance. It is a beautiful setting.

Hilton Creek rushes down the mountain beside Dave's house.

The four of us took a drive up to McGee Canyon and to Rock Creek Lake.

McGee Canyon

Rock Creek Lake

Dave and Don

Today we went from Bishop down through a couple of the little towns south of here. We have driven through them dozens of times coming up here when we lived in California, but just didn't stop to check out some of the points of interest before now. It was an interesting day, to say the least.

Our first stop was in the little town of Independence, and I do mean "little" town. There's not much there except for an impressive courthouse, built in the '20's right in the middle of town.

It is renown because it is the courthouse where the Charles Manson Family hearings were held. I don't know where the jail was. That we didn't see. I can't imagine where all the attorneys and news people stayed during that time.

It's about 40 miles back into Bishop, but I suppose that is where they had to go. 

There was also a small but very impressive museum in Independence that we thoroughly enjoyed. They had an incredible collection of native-made baskets that was just amazing.

A few miles beyond Independence is Manzanar. Manzanar, which sits in the shadow of snow-covered Mt. Whitney, was one a number of the Japanese Internment Camps that the government set up in 1942 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It was then that our government forced 120,000 people of Japanese decent living in American to leave their homes with only 48 hours notice.

Two thirds of these people were American citizens. They were able to take almost nothing with them as they were forced to go to these camps. 

They lived in barracks behind barbed wire in these mile-square camps. They all had to wear tags with a Family Number on it for identification.

In the museum you are asked to take one tag of a real person who was detained there. This one was issued to Kuichiro Nishi. On the back of each tag there was a short description of what happened to this person. My tag said,

"On December 7, 1941, FBI agents entered Kuichiro Nishi's home and arrested him after he had gone to bed. His family was later sent to Manzanar without knowing when or if they would see him again."

The detainees were released in 1945, homeless and penniless and given $25 each with which they had to rebuild their lives.

It was a heart-wrenching story told in a 22 minute movie. There was also a self directed driving tour of the compound, where you could see where the tar-paper covered barracks had been as well as numerous other buildings including a guard's tower.

There are a couple barracks left and the auditorium is which is now a museum is original to the camp. It was a sad part of American history.

Entrance to Manzanar

Original Auditorium and Firetruck

Tar-Papered Barracks

Guard Tower

After Manzanar, we stopped by Lone Pine, another small town of about 1,500 folks. This little town is known for it's history as a place where many, many old Western movies were filmed. Probably every old Western you saw as a kid was filmed here. 

They were filming a Ford car commercial in Lone Pine when we were there today. All the trailers and people were set up on Main Street. I don't know where the actual commercial was being shot.

 

Hollywood loves the hills and boulders with the high Sierras in the background so they could have been doing it just outside of town.

There is a Western Movie museum there which we visited. The museum had lots of pictures, movie posters and memorabilia of all the good guys in white hats and of course, Hop a Long Cassidy, the good guy in the black hat. It was fun, informative and certainly different from Manzanar.

In all the years Don and I have been coming to this area, both together and separately, we never stopped to go through these places. We were always in a hurry to get where we were going.

Now in retirement we are slowing down a bit and finding hidden gems on well-beaten trails. Its a shame we don't slow down earlier.

Next we are heading further south on highway 395 and will stop by some ghost towns and do some desert camping. That's where we pull the motorhome out on the desert between cactus and rattlesnakes (Oh, I hope not!) build a campfire and kick back.