Almost Home - California and Nevada

We left Valley Center and the Takach Ranch and headed north up the Cajon Pass to Victorville and got our zillionth tank of gas at another Costco. I do want to thank Costco for all the best gas prices on this 8,000 mile trip. After leaving Victorville we got on highway 395 for another 190 miles. We camped at Boulder Creek RV Resort a really nice place to stay with some great views of the leeward side of the Sierras

The views east were also beautiful as the shadow of the Sierras rose slowly up the mountainside in that direction.

You can even see a truck's headlights in the distance.


I also too some odd shots of this blooming shrub...


... and a barbed wire fence.


and the last rays of the sun over the Sierras


Mount Whitney is over here somewhere and Sequoia Park just the other side of the mountains.


Even if you don't have an RV they also have these great Park Model cabins to rent.


A little up the road was Manzanar National Historic Site

"In 1942, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children to leave their homes and detained them in remote, military-style camps. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II."

Mt. Williamson, directly west of Manzanar, is the second highest peak in California. Its elevation is 14,370 feet.

The town of Manzanar—the Spanish word for “apple orchard”—developed as an agricultural settlement beginning in 1910. Farmers grew apples, pears, peaches, potatoes, and alfalfa on several thousand acres surrounding the town.

The residential area was about one square mile, and consisted of 36 blocks of hastily constructed, 20-foot by 100-foot (30 m) tarpaper barracks, with each prisoner family living in a single 20-foot by 25-foot “apartment” in the barracks. These apartments consisted of partitions with no ceilings, eliminating any chance of privacy.

While they called it a relocation center it was an internment camp. Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial.

"When I was there in 1942, the towers did not have any glass at all. We had no telephones at any time. The searchlight was hand controlled so we had to climb up on the roof to operate it. When we first arrived at Manzanar we used to shine the lights in the windows of the barracks at all hours of the night. The people in the compound complained so we were told not to continue the harassment.

We did not have any stationary machine guns mounted in the tower. We had Thompson submachine guns, shotguns, and 30' caliber rifles which each sentry carried on and off duty." ~Pat Tortorello, Military Policeman at Manzanar in Spring, 1942

Matt had left his Blackberry - I-phone - something or other CHARGER in our RV so we stopped at the UPS store so Sharyn could next day deliver it back to Arizona.


We then went up the road a bit more to Bishop, CA...


...so we could get some Bakery supplies at...


... the Erick Schat's Bakkerÿ yummy!


There was a NASA facility somewhere out along the road and Sharyn got a great picture of some towers I don't think was for someone's satellite TV.


We finally got to Mono Lake,saw some Tufa action and noticed someone lost their hub cap...


... next to this very interesting body of water.


Mono Lake is a majestic body of water covering about 65 square miles. It is an ancient lake, over 1 million years old -- one of the oldest lakes in North America. It has no outlet.

The reserve at Mono Lake was established to preserve the spectacular "tufa towers," calcium-carbonate spires and knobs formed by interaction of freshwater springs and alkaline lake water. It also protects the lake surface itself as well as the wetlands and other sensitive habitat for the one to 2 million birds that feed and rest at Mono Lake each year.

Throughout its long existence, salts and minerals have washed into the lake from Eastern Sierra streams. Freshwater evaporating from the lake each year has left the salts and minerals behind so that the lake is now about 2 1/2 times as salty as the ocean and very alkaline.


Mono lake isn't the only body of water and many small and large lakes can be seen on the plains of the valleys East of the Sierras...


... and there is snow in them thar hills.


There are some majestic scenes...


... all along highway 395 even some rivers of golden Aspen trees...


... and rugged grey walls of stone...


... that towered above us even on a road 6,000 feet high.


There are layers of rock that on the windward (West) side of the mountains make up Yosemite Park.



Sharyn and I loved the views today as we drove through Nevada and back into California and on to Standish, CA for the night at another very nice RV park called Days End.

Quote of the Day ~

"Well, it gives, certainly to my father, who is the one that suffered the most in our family, and understanding of how the ideals of a country are only as good as the people who give it flesh and blood." ~ George Takei

George Hosato Takei Altman (born April 20, 1937) is an American actor of Japanese descent, best known for his role in the television series Star Trek, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise and, who as a young man, lived in one of the California "Relocation Centers"