Eastern Sierras Road Trip - More Alabama Hills

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Today didn’t get off to a very good start.  I came downstairs to get my breakfast and Doug said he had some bad news – my rear driver’s side tire was flat.  How could that be, my car is a week old today and I already have a flat tire?  Unfortunately it was true and very flat.

I skipped breakfast and immediately went out to change it which was pretty easy, but took a bit longer as things were a little different than my old 4Runner.  The next problem was finding a place to fix it and someone across the road from our house came over when he saw me changing my tire and said there was only one place in Lone Pine that would fix tires and that was Miller’s Automotive.  They weren’t open yet so I ate some breakfast and then gave them a call and they said bring it in.

Hard at work changing the tire.  Since it was a new vehicle for me, I was looking for a place to set the jack.

Val and I drove into Lone Pine and found the repair place.  Miller’s Automotive is the kind of place you would expect to find in a small town, but evidently they get a lot of tire problems as they had a section just for that and as we pulled in a guy walked out like he was expecting us (I guess he was) and told us where to pull in.  He was very nice and talked to us as he repaired the tire; I picked up a lot of good advice I didn’t know about tires.  He said the puncture was caused by a small sharp rock that had gotten caught in the grooves between the tread.  I have driven quite a bit off road and this is the first time I have ever had a flat tire caused by a rock.  He quickly fixed it and even reinstalled it on the car for me and we were on our way back to the house.  Thanks to Miller’s Automotive, our day was saved.

Then, when we got back to the house, I had to put the spare back up in its place and by the time I got back in the house, Doug, Janis and Val were already packing our lunch for the day’s outing.

Our plan for the day was to do some more exploring in the Alabama Hills, but since it was getting a little late in the morning, we decided to drive all the way to the end of Whitney Portal road and have a picnic in the campground there.  Whitney Portal is the starting point to hike up to the top of Mt. Whitney; a pretty arduous hike.  Doug has done the hike several times and once with our dad when he was in his early seventies (my dad not Doug 😄).

As we got a mile or two from the end we were surprised to see a “Road Closed for the Winter” sign, we had forgotten that it’s still winter in the higher elevations.  Since our plans for lunch were thwarted, we drove back down to continue our exploration of the Alabama Hills.  We had gotten a map from the Movie Museum that listed some of the well-known movie sites so we decided to find some of those, but there was nothing left of them to see except the locations where they had been.  It was still interesting to drive around as the area is very beautiful and interesting.

This was where Gunga Din's camp was in the movie Gunga Din, but there was nothing left of the set so you had to use your imagination..

We also visited several arches including Cave Arch and the Eye of Alabama Arch

The area around Cave Arch

This was the aptly names "Cave Arch"

Doug and I hiked up to the Eye of Alabama Arch and even though it was only a quarter of a mile hike, the last 100 yards or so was very steep and loose gravel.  The disappointing thing was that even though we had some great views of the arch going up, after walking the last 100 yards we were behind the arch, which was hidden and there was no way (at least for a non-rock climber) to climb up to the arch.  We still had a great time doing it and the trek down went very quickly.

The Eye of Alabama Arch

That's the 4Runner way down below by the road.

Val took these from below.  That's Doug and I on our way up.

Doug and I are up above the arch, but couldn't see it and couldn't find a way to get up to it.

We were getting hungry so the next order of business was to find a place to have our lunch.  We found a nice spot that sheltered us from the wind that had started to blow and we had a nice lunch.  The temperatures during the days have been in the mid-seventies up into the low eighties so it has been very pleasant.

Doug and Janis getting ready for lunch.

We really enjoyed our lunch break, but it doesn't look like anyone is enjoying me interrupting their lunch taking pictures.

We checked out a few more movie sites and at one point found our way on a very tight road with very little clearance between the rocks on both sides.  There was no way I was going to let my new car get scratched or damaged to I got out and guided Val driving through the narrow section.  I had read about that section when I was researching the trip, but I didn’t really know where it was, but we found it and made our way through with no harm done.

We decided to call it a day and head back to the house.  We spent the afternoon relaxing, although I had to catch up on the blog so I spent quite a bit of time doing that.

 

These last two pictures were taken on Tuttle Creek Road that leads to our rental house.  Not a bad drive to get home.

Dinner tonight was like a greatest hits meal as we finished up the leftovers from our previous three nights – everything was still very good and we had a great dinner.

The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and chatting.  We decided tomorrow we would drive up to the Bishop area and do an off road trip.