Eastern Sierra Road Trippin'

The first time I saw Iron Man (aren’t Marvel movies just the best?!) I knew they filmed on the Eastern Sierra. specifically the Alabama Hills. It is one of the prime locations for movies, commercials, TV shows. Among the many films are Iron Man, Django, Tremors, Star Trek, Man of Steel, not to mention TONS of old westerns and we all know why. The backdrop of our side of the mountain range is steep and rugged, I read it’s because of the way it was formed and forced out of the earth 100 million years ago and each peak was scrubbed by glaciers revealing the white granite. It is spectacular.


  
When Rick and I couldn’t take one more cold rainy/snowy weekend we decided to head south on 395. Traveling the backside of Yosemite and the Ansel Adams wilderness there are numerous places you really gotta see but in our quest for warm we chose to head all the way down to Lone Pine. We left after work and spent the first night at Topaz Lake just 2 hours from home and cccccold at night the next morning we set off, taking our time and stopping along the way. Roadtrippin is not to be too planned out :) Oh. My Gosh. I wanna tell you all the places you NEED to go! For now I’ll stick to our destination, the Alabama Hills, about 5 hours from Susanville and an incredible sight. Rock formations, arches, hiking trails all against the backdrop of Mt Whitney’s granite peaks. Whitney is the highest summit in the contiguous United States and a hot bed of activity in the summer, in Spring not so much. Spectacular scenery. Sounds expensive to stay in such a cool place right? It’s FREE! That’s right, no entry fee, no camping fee. No. Fee. Tons of camping spots with rock fire pits beautifully maintained. Here you can: drive through, bike, hike, climb, ride horses, atvs and camp all thanks to BLM, always keeping our public lands…well, public. At night Rick headed out to Mobius Arch for some night photography of the Milky Way, he was not disappointed. As for me and the dogs, after a peek at the stars we slept right through it.

The good folks at BLM are always happy to share all their info with enthusiasm, or you can just check out their website for maps to our public lands!

Some of the photos are mine but the really good ones are Rick’s~