Tehachapi to Bishop, CA
Monday, May 12, 2025
After a quick
breakfast we were on the road by nine as we headed over the Tehachapi’s and
around the eastern end of the Sierras to US 395.
It was a nice drive up 395, but we saw there was quite a bit of
construction ahead, so we decided to bypass it.
At the small
town of Olanche, we turned east off 395 onto CA190 that is the back way into Death
Valley. It is a 4-wheel drive road into
Death Valley, but the section we were on was all paved. I have always wanted to take it all the way
into Death Valley but today wouldn’t be that day.
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| Our side trip around Owens Lake and the town of Keeler. Owens Lake is blue on the map, but is a dry lake. |
(A note about the photos: Once again on this road trip, I had my GoPro on top of the 4Runner taking videos as we drove. Many of the pictures in this blog are frames taken from those videos which means they are often not very sharp and they are out in the elements so the lens can be dirty or wet at times.)
Before 190
turned towards Death Valley we turned north on CA136 that would take us back
to 395 in Lone Pine. These two highways
and 395 form a triangle around Owens Lake, which has been a dry lake since the
early 1900’s when the city of Los Angeles diverted most of the water from the
Owens River into an aqueduct and that spelled doom for Owens Lake. In recent years some water has been allowed
back into the lake, but it is still mostly dry.
It is also very dusty and with the wind blowing today, we went through
quite a bit of dust.
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| The dry Owens Lake is off to the right. |
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| It was quite windy and a lot of dust was blowing off the lake bed. |
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| Turning right takes you the back way into Death Valley, but today we'll turn left towards Lone Pine. |
We did have
one interesting side trip into the very small town (population 50) of Keeler
that sits on the shore of Owens Lake. Here is a link with pictures of Keeler in its heyday. It
is mostly run down with some areas looking more like junkyards than a town, but
we found it interesting, and it looks like its inhabitants like it just the way
it is. There is even a “beach club”
which shows they do have a sense of humor.
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| Entering Keeler |
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| To the right is the sign for the Keeler Beach Club. This once was a real thing, but now it's more of a joke. |
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| The Keeler "Beach Club" |
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| Keeler does have a volunteer fire department just past this dilapidated trailer. |
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| Back to 136 |
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| Back to 395 and Lone Pine. The Interagency Visitor’s Center is on the right. |
When we
reached Lone Pine, we stopped at the Interagency Visitor’s Center to see if we
could get some information on the wild mustangs that inhabit the area near Mono
Lake, but they said they were too far south of the area for that kind of information. We had been directed there by the Bishop BLM
office, so it looks like we’ll be on our own.
It seems there is a shortage of rangers, so it makes information hard to
get.
From Lone
Pine we decided to take another side trip and took Movie Road through the
Alabama Hills. We have been to the
Alabama Hills several times with the latest being in 2022 when we were here
with my brother and his wife (here is a link to that trip). We still
found it so fascinating and beautiful we made quite a few stops taking pictures
and enjoying the landscape.
Surprisingly, there were very few people there, which made it even
nicer.
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| Movie Road through the Alabama Hills. It starts out paved, but turns into a well maintained dirt road after that. |
Movie Road
rejoins 395 about 5 miles north of Lone Pine and from there we drove on to Bishop where
we are staying tonight. When we arrived
in Bishop we went to another Visitor’s Center in search of information, but
they were already closed. We found a
grocery store for some supplies for our lunches tomorrow and the coming days
and then checked into our hotel.
We relaxed a
bit, had some dinner and I caught up on the blog and then we called it a
night. Tomorrow we are off in search of wild
mustangs.
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