Alabama Hills
Camp Review
I camped here two and a half years ago and besides less available campsites, the place is timeless.
The place was way less packed than when I last visited, but due to the reduced amount of campsites, finding a campsite was just as difficult.
There were some broken bottles around the rocks near the campsite.
What I Learned
This was my first time sleeping in my car camper with winds above 20 mph (40+mph according to a couple websites). I can’t complain about the noise the camper made in front of Darlene and Louie, but I was a tiny bit worried about all the racket I heard throughout the night. Of course, all that anxiety was for naught, as Ramona handled the winds like nothin’. As for me, the ANC in my AirPods did a great job of letting me sleep deeply in two, long, almost-silent spurts.
Alabama Hills has finally addressed the overcrowding issue by declaring most of the previous campsites as off-limits—great for long term stewardship of Alabama Hills, bad for people like me trying to find a campsite last minute.
Even though it was so cold (mid 20s at night), the two layers of blankets was a bit too warm for me, even without a base layer on. I ended up using just a single layer to cool down a bit.
Friends
Darlene, Louie, Marina, and Sarah joined me at this campsite. Darlene and Louie toughed out the 40+mph winds while Marina and Sarah shared the Subaru, and I had Ramona all to myself. I like to think of myself as not being soft, but I feel like Darlene and Louie showed me what heart looks like by knowingly sleeping their tents with the crazy winds that shook their tent all night long. I knew they were hardy before, but man, I was impressed with them in the morning—especially when I asked them how they slept and they told me, “not as bad as I thought.” Legends.
What Happened?
After climbing Shark’s Fin, we drove around trying to find a campsite—which I think took about an hour (maybe a little less?). We drove all around the non-4x4 parts of Alabama Hills (Marina and Sarah followed in the Subie, which impressed me with what it could do, but I still wouldn’t take it to places where Ramona could go). We just could not find an empty designated campsite for the night. As we were about to give up and head to Tuttle Creek Campground, we saw a car driving out of one of the entrances into a deeper part of Alabama Hills. I waved him down and asked him if he saw any empty campsites on the way out. He told me that in fact, he had just abandoned an awesome campsite and it was just three campsites down the road (~1/2 mile). It was almost exactly 1/2 mile down the road (I wasn’t sure the Subie could make it, but it did with some minor scrapes).
Louie and Darlene got to setting up their tents with Marina and Sarah helping, while I worked on dinner. When dinner was ready, we all piled into the camper as it was the place that could house all of us (snugly) while we shelled from the heat-sapping winds. After we cleaned up the bulgogi and the salad, we ended up playing a game that Darlene introduced to us.
The game is like a remix of some popular group games. Basically, everyone wrote 6-8 words (I might have been the only one to write 8 as I misheard the instructions) and we put the words into a bag. The game consists of four rounds, the first being “Taboo”, the second “Charades”, then only being able to use sound effects, and the final round being “Password.” We needed two teams, so Darlene volunteered to be the floater while Marina and I teamed up versus Sarah and Louie.
At first, I wasn’t sure how fun the game would be, but laughter came often and with intensity. I think the character of all of us made the super fun (as some of us were sillier than others with the submitted words, while some were more naughty). I feel like the game must have taken us an hour or more to play, but after all the laughing, we were tired and ready for bed.
In the morning, I cooked everyone burgers for breakfast as everyone packed up and got ready to drive out. Afterwards, I was feeling so cold (maybe I cooled down too much? Maybe I should have dressed warmer while cooking?) that I ended up not even participating in the Halloween costume photoshoot (which I regret missing out on as I write this).
My efforts to warm up by sitting huddled in the sun wasn’t working too well, but since everyone else was game for warming up, we headed into town for gas and warm drinks. We ended up at the legendary Alabama Hills Cafe & Bakery where some of us got hot chocolates and others got lattes. We then headed off to Fossil Falls (where we ended up just doing a short hike).