Alabama Hills
After a sobering walk at Manzanar, I headed south to Alabama Hills. The off road trail was fun, with little stream crossings, sections where you have to slow down by a lot, and sections where you get to drive at 50mph, with the tires kicking up tons of dust.
When I made I to Alabama Hills, I visited the following points of interest:
Afterwards, I spent about an hour driving around looking for a place to camp. It seemed like all the great spots were taken, but as I was checking out the more remote sites, I stumbled upon my campsite for the night.
This valley I stumbled onto had no one else in it, and was as quiet as could be. I loved it. I cooked dinner and watched the sunset before heading to sleep.
The next day, I woke up and drove seven hours back home.
What I Learned:
While off-road driving, I went over a series of rocks faster than I should and I definitely scraped the skid plates. Thank god I have them.
There were some local looking folks eating their lunch next to a stream on the way to Alabama Hills. I couldn’t see them super well and I thought they were crossing the stream. As I was driving from the opposite direction, I waited for them for a solid 20 seconds before I realized that they were just parked in a turnout. Smooth.
While looking for a camping spot, I drove by this point of interest called “The Loaf”. While it’s marked as a climbing spot, it’s also a camping spot. In a cave. I really hope one day I come early enough to get that spot.
I have the Mavic Air drone and I found out that if I have a ND filter on it (to slow the shutter speed down), any video that I record comes out at 15fps, and is unusable for my compilation videos.
I had the best dinner I’ve ever had while camping, which was just heating up a Korean pre-made packet of Ox-tail soup and drowning some refrigerated rice in it.
Because there are mountains to the east, the sunrise shows on Mount Whitney twice. There’s a false sunrise that is very reddish, which is followed by the real sunrise as the sun peeks over the Inyo mountains to directly touch Whitney.
Camp Review:
It took an hour of driving to find a spot in the late afternoon. While driving around, I found so many great looking occupied sites that I definitely want to come back at a later time to sample them all.
The spot that I ended up finding was hidden away in a valley by itself and it was amazing to have a site where I felt like I owned this place.
There are two bathrooms, but they’re near Movie Road. Otherwise, it’s dispersed camping.
There are tons of things to do near by and at Alabama Hills, and it’s just amazing that it’s all free.