Walking in Lone Pine

This is what we see from the end of our street in the RV park.  It's pretty dang inspiring.  Lone Pine is at the foot of Mt. Whitney.  I'm not exactly clear on which of those peaks is Whitney, but she's up there. 

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Since we were tired from our grueling two days of driving in the wind, we slept in and then mooched around the RV for awhile.  After said mooching we went for a strenuous walk.  The road across the freeway from Boulder Creek is pretty steep.  See the road zig-zagging its way up the mountain side?  That's the road up to Horse Shoe meadows.  We did that hike last year and didn't like it so much.  The trails are sand, plus it's at 10,000 feet and there are bears. 

This is a very bucolic area.  It has to be livestock heaven.  The dark blobs are cows.  There is a stream that runs through the field and there is grass.

On the other side of the street is horse heaven.  I think of the poor horses in Tucson who spend their lives on dirt and sand, and then you look at what these horses have.  This is better.

After lunch we headed out in the truck and found this road.  It was a left turn off of Horseshoe Meadows road.  We took it to see where it went, since it was labelled off limits to trailers.  It has a lot of up down and very tight corners.  The sign was correct about trailers.

There are some very cool rocks along the way.

I'm guessing this an old mine entrance.

Eventually it ends up on Whitney Portal road in Lone Pine.  I love this sign. 

We stopped in at Joseph's Bi-Rite for groceries.  We flunked stocking up before leaving Sedona.  People in remote small towns pay so much for food.  A box of french toast is $2.50 in Tucson and $3.89 here.  Transportation costs must be paid somehow. It was interesting to watch people in the grocery store; they know each other and stop to chat.  In Tucson people practice not making eye contact and getting out of the store as quickly as possible.  Our checker today had a fire department scanner on and was very interested in where they were going.  I couldn't understand a word that was being said.
Tomorrow we will attempt to make it to the Ashram, a hike I did not complete last year

Needles to Lone Pine CA

It was another gusty day.  Granted, it's not as bad as the heartland, or in LA with the Santa Annas, but it was noisy.  We got diesel in Barstow, where we learned that Pilot will give you 3 cents a gallon if you have a Good Sam membership.  So there you go.  When did the cent sign disappear off of our keyboards?  It seems like one day we had one, and then we didn't.

Much of the drive is just beyond boring.  A lot of it looks like this.

This was taken about 30 miles from Lone Pine.  There's a lot of volcanic rock, and this is a cinder cone.

So, we're here for 6 days at Boulder Creek.  Wunderground says the winds will not be as fierce, I hope their weather model is correct. 
We're really tired, I think we'll eat dinner and go to bed early.  We were up early, it's tiring.

Sedona to Calizona RV Park in Needles CA

This morning the avocados were put in their traveling configuration.  It was going to be a bumpy day for them.

The route to Needles is along I40.  Like most of the freeways in America, I40 could use a little work. 

You see a lot of this.  I will say that the Love's Truck Stop just east of Kingman is excellent.  They run two payment counters, one is dedicated to paying for diesel at the truck pumps, so you don't have to wait for someone to pay for their fried chicken and jojos.  Ingress and egress are well marked and good.  The Flying J closer to Kingman is in a very built up area and not as convenient to the freeway.

How does this happen?  It's a clear day with perfect visibility.  Although it was windy, it's not that windy.

We're staying at the Calizona RV Park in Needles.  Visually, it is very unappealing.  That's it out in the distance. 

If you're in a Class A, you would be well served to get out an look at the utilities vs. the location of your bay doors before turning in to the site.  We let the very nice gentleman who drives the golf cart park us, and we're too close to the power pedestal.  Since we're towing, we can't back up.  Due to the layout of the park, we can't make a right and go around.  So, we're just hanging on to the bay doors while we hook things up.
It's not a terrible park.  It's all hard packed dirt with a little gravel. It's level.  The park internet works!  I'm posting with park internet.  Water pressure and power are both good.  We have 5 bars on the Verizon Jetpack.  There's a cell tower not too far from us.  We do not anticipate any difficulty with leaving here, like we had with the other RV park in Needles last year.

It's very windy here.  The bus is jiggling and something on the roof is vibrating.  We're really hoping that it'll die off a little at sunset.
Tomorrow we are up and out for our next stay in Lone Pine.

Sedona - Distant Drums RV Park

While in Sedona, we stayed at the Distant Drums RV Park.  It's a nice park.  Sites are fairly level.  In our section the RV was on concrete as was the truck.  You are close to your neighbors.  We're the green bus on the left, that's our neighbor's vehicle on the right.  The surface between sites is not sand and it's not gravel, it's somewhere in between.  It's raked daily and looks very nice.

These are the "pull throughs." You pull in and back out.  I think the back in sites are actually easier to deal with.

In no particular order, here is the good.  Staff is friendly and helpful.  They lead you to your site, and the guy in the golf cart directs acts as a ground guide for backing.  The person we had was pretty good, although Jim wasn't happy because he was not totally parallel in the space.   The laundry is clean and reasonably priced.  Satellite reception is not impaired by any pesky over hanging trees.  There are very few trees.  Interior roads are paved.  There is a little road noise, but it's not bad.  There are no train tracks or airplanes.
The less good is the Verizon Jetpack.  We generally were in 4G, but never more than 3 bars.  One night it was totally unusable.  Park wi-fi is totally worthless.  If you go up to the office you can use their wifi.
The park is geographically undesirable.  Camp Verde is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  The drive to the trails we liked off of Dry Creek Road was generally 50 minutes.  Traffic through Sedona can be very tedious.  Oak Creek and Sedona are both full of traffic circles which add to the slow flow of cars.
If we come back to Sedona, I think we will stay here again.  The RV park in town is fairly expensive, covered in trees and hard to get reservations.  There is another park in Cottonwood, but it is also treed.  Jim does not like over hanging trees.

Update to post - May 20, 2015
We're on site 57 this time, it's a standard back in site.  We are facing the giant video screen that advertises the casino.  Park internet is working on this site.  Verizon has two bars of 4G. When making reservations, ask for a site that does not face the giant video bill board.

Update to post - June 9, 2019
June is not a good time to be here.  Don't do this, too hot.  We were in site 115 and the internet is blazing!  The pull in, back out sites face due west in to the setting sun.  Don't get one of those in mid-June.

Hiking the Hiline

Today's hike was the Hiline Trail.  It's a relatively new trail.  The scenery is magnificent.  It starts at Yavapai Point.  If you are coming from the south on 179, you'll need to over shoot the trail head, go to the traffic circle at Back of Beyond and then go south about a mile and turn right into the parking lot.  There are multiple trails heading out from the trail head.  They don't seem to get much use, most of the people seem to be at the trail head on the other side of 179.

It's a difficult trail.  There are many parts of it that are basically rock piles.

This is a smooth section of rock.  If you look at the bottom you can see it's somewhat lumpy.

More scenic beauty.

This was difficult for me in places.  The trail is very narrow, maybe two feet, it slopes down just a little, and drops off into the abyss.  It doesn't look that bad, but it was getting to me a little.  It's another one of those places that Jim and I will never ride our bikes.

There are people that can do it.  We were talking to a guy from Tennessee who had been told he should ride it for bragging rights.  He said if he'd known what it would be like he might have gone somewhere else.

I will say that the women we have seen riding are tough.  We went by a group of them the other day on our ride, and they were heading uphill faster than we are going down hill. There are more women riders here than I think I've seen anywhere.  It might have something to do with the fact that the road riding here is abysmal.
Tomorrow we are up and out, heading to beautiful Needles, CA.  Then it's on to the Owens Valley.

More Hiking and Some Biking in Sedona

Yesterday we hiked out Cockscomb to see what we would see.  It was supposed to be a short little stroll, but it became much longer due to scouting some trails for riding.  Here is Jim in his new shirt.  He's highly visible - it'll be good in hunting season.

Anyway the trail didn't look too awful, so today we decided to take the mountain bikes out.  I actually rode pretty well.  We're at 4200 feet, and I could tell on each and every climb.  It was fun.  We didn't ride very far,  no sense in tempting fate before a big vacation.

Check this out.  This is a house for sale on Rt. 179.  Here is the Sotheby's listing for it.  This place is just amazing.  On the website there are interior shots of the house.  Furniture placement would be very difficult, all the walls are curved.

This is taken from the back.  There are 10 of these dome structures on the property.
 

We saw this guy the other day.  He has made himself a gas powered vehicle.  It looks like he extended a trike and put long handle bars on it. It's quite the conveyance.

The wind has been howling this afternoon.  The storm that's coming from the GPNW is almost here.  Traffic on I10 between Phoenix and Tucson had multiple mile backups due to blowing dust and accidents.  An RV burned to a pile of rubble, closing the freeway for hours.  I'm glad we're not traveling this weekend.