Lone Pine

Here are all the pics 

After feeling earthquakes in the bones from the heart stopping hot power yoga there was nothing for it but to nap I forgot the nap was after the hot yoga before we headed off on the open road, and Scott was all up for us napping in the green walled room for a little longer. The yoga teacher she had said something about if you're new to yoga and when I say new I mean 10 to 15 years... ?! That's new to yoga in this teacher's eyes but she was proud of us we got a pat on the head she said you did the right thing. It was hot and muggy after the nap mixed in with excitement about the road ahead and all the stuff had to go in the orange red car, with the red and purple fruit from the market and the cashew nut cheese we hit the road, again on the lanes and highway crevices and the barely visible white line separating the lanes from more lanes and I couldn't wait to get on that one road which I thought was going to be one little road like the ones they have between towns in countries with lots of space between towns. The cashew nut friendly girl from Silverlake told us to get an In N Out Burger which is famous in California for being made in California with fries freshly cut and made right there and the beef California beef and not much else. I don't usually eat burgers or dream about going to drive ins for greasy things but she was the cashew nut cheese lady and so I couldn't think of anything except for this In N Out Burger, I was imagining seeing cows grazing on the grass outside and leafy salads and chunky chips and the hunger was real. 

Cars started depleting as the road became a longer silver snake leading into hot sparse desert Mars-scapes, this was it the open road of California was upon us and the orange red car and it wasn't the one road that everyone drives up (Highway 1) but Highway 395 which was more intrepid and mountainy through the Sierra Nevada. It became sparser still but the road stayed in two lanes which equals easy driving and the speed limit was 65 kmph and there were radars watching your speed but I still sometimes went a touch faster because some people were and some weren't but it was cruising all the same, cruising down the sparse hot silver highway and at every turn there was a field or veld as we say in SA, a veld of longish cacti with fat fingers and spiky green hairdos on each finger. The urge to stop at every turn to take pictures was strong but knowing there was more to come and an In N Out Burger somewhere up ahead meant keeping the nose forward. Eventually a sign in the distance poking up over the road shouted something in red and white and yes the California food of the road was before us and the red orange car zipped to park in already full car park and we bulldozed inside. Inside it was the 1950's with red and white plastic seats with smooth sloping sides, a menu with 3 items and a thousand staff getting burgers and fries into the mouths of the never ending drive through snake in the parking lot. You got burger, cheese burger or fries and that was it so if that wasn't it you were going to starve so we got our burgers and fries and sat outside under a red plastic umbrella and ate looking over the full car park. I'm going to confess something right now that we are the biggest food snobs on the planet and so I can only say underwhelming things about In N Out but I was happy to be there drinking an ice cold Coke feeling revived and everyone was always so pleasant and friendly even the teenagers in hungry loud groups. 

The sky was now becoming more baby blue and the clouds like little soft baby booties and the road more silver and long and straight and the fields and veld becoming rich with orange and reds and fuzzy fat fingered cacti and me cruising somewhere around 65 kmph just drifting without hindrance and the Americana playlist I put together all got stirred into a pot on my lap and there were happy free sighs. There were big trucks but mostly SUVs and I wondered like you do where are they all going down this silver road into the distance, what's down that road there and that side road, it looks like nothing and there are no corners to look round but there is something and that something is a really cool landscape, would you just look at all this space. 

Now the sky mixed with dark purples and blues and a big duvet of dark cloud pulls over half the sky and the wind picks up, there is some green and some cows in a field and then Lone Pine. It had one road two lanes each side that ran through it and it was quaint as hell. This town is famous for the movies that were made in the rocky boulder strewn landscape of Alabama Hills like Django Unchained, The Lone Ranger and Star Trek.  Motels and a film museum and a barbecue place, now we pull into our Dow Villa Motel with a huge friendly road side sign and smack in the middle of the car park there’s a pool and a food truck with a barbecue hanging off the back and people in lawn chairs gathered round the truck in jeans and cowboy hats and pink shoulders and beers. There was no certainty that the invite extended to us maybe it would have been but probably not so we go into the polite cool tiled reception area to find our lodgings. The room happens to be up the stairs in the main building that was like a hotel, not a room in the more motel looking bit outside with rows of rooms together looking out over the pool and car park barbecue. There was a living room next to reception with a big TV showing 'the game' with everything cosy and the room was cosy too like a guest room in a grandmother’s house who knows how to entertain her guests. A sink and mirror set into the wall, there are Lone Pine pictures from ye olde times and a bed so high up with a giant mattress and pillow that I have to lift one leg over as if climbing a fence to get on it but once on it the comfort and softness is extreme and I start to think that beds are a thing here. The bathroom has an extra door locked form the inside on the opposite side but I think nothing of it strewing clothes and possessions across the room then head out to find some food. The quaint as hell street has around 10 places on each side of the road to eat and shop for snowboarding and mountain gear and some places to eat that all look like they’re closing at 7pm and all the while the purple clouds build in a menacing in an exiting way, wind whips everyone around and I realise my eyes feel like someone’s tipped some ground up razor blades in it and I think it’s just me but when I see the dedicated wall of eye drops and hayfever potions in the little supermarket I realise it’s a common thing in dusty windy cotton country. To confirm this the cashier lady confirms it saying her first year was razors all in the eyes, I hear a rumble and a huge truck lit up like a Christmas tree rolls past with a tanker of cotton spewing out over the sides and into the air. 

There are lots of young mountain climbing snow boarding types in beanies walking up and down the street, this is a extreme sports climbing area and I wish that’s what we were doing and so I try pretend I am. Tonight we choose to eat here it has oak wooden chairs and tables all rustic with native American curios and gifts to buy and the people running it look native American too and I can’t stop looking because they’re so cool and interesting and also beautiful. There are families and older couples so we’ve found the upper end of the 5 restaurants obviously because we love to eat the good stuff, soup and fish and salad so tasty with flavours and citrus and juicy white fish and a big heavy cold glass of ale, it’s all about the ales and I can’t remember the names of them as the big wet duvet falls to the ground in a heavy downpour and the sky starts showing who’s boss with it’s purples and blues and wind. No one has umbrellas or expects any rain in this dry spring desert that is also having a drought so outside the running from the rain is done with glee, then the smell comes up from the roads and it’s so much like I remember in South Africa the smell of rain on the hot tar. After licking the plates we look at some more native American gift shops and I think that just like everywhere else this was once a rich and thriving area for the native people and now what’s left is some shops selling wind catchers and turquoise jewellery and I think it’s a bit weird and a little sad, but there are tourists now to buy it up and it’s okay to celebrate the native culture right because there’s no chance they can get the now main Americans off the top spot. 

More massive trucks with bejewelled and bejazzled lights cruise past the one horse town on their way to LA probably and there’s just enough time to nip into a shop to buy a warm hat which I think I might need in Yosemite. The shop man was super friendly and gave all kinds of tips and maps and places to stop because he lived in Yosemite as a guide for 3 years and I can’t help thinking what a great job that was in a coveting way and all kinds of friends stepped in and talked about a get together happening down the road with climbers and cool kids and I wanted to join but we just talked about where to go in Yosemite which was actually exciting enough. I got my pink and white hat and a chocolate bar and went back to grandmother’s clean cosy guest room to put the TV on to see what American TV was all about. There was mainly politics which you could watch from the fence high cloud bed until it was late enough or probably too late to brush my teeth. There was a sink in the room but the bathroom was there so I left the door wide open and in my knickers brushed my teeth at the room sink but then heard a sound you don’t want to hear at midnight in your pants in a strange room, someone in the bathroom. That’s right someone was in our bathroom and the door closed and was locked from the inside and there was a pissing sound. We had a shared bathroom with the room next door and no one thought to tell us that’s how it works in motel hotel rooms so the whole night we were gone the bathroom door wide open and possessions strewn but they turned out to be honest bathroom squatters. 

There was only one day in Lone Pine next day so out come the maps a route is set. We're heading to the Alabama Hills to check out those famous old movie spots then to the top of Mount Whitney but of course first breakfast and it being 7am (jet-lag is still our early friend) on a Sunday there was only one place to go and it's the Alabama Hills Cafe and Bakery which is all about home cooking and there's a queue outside already. I want to sniff the air and look around so after putting our name in the queue pile I go sniffing up the road looking at mountains and teeny wooden houses and I wonder why the houses look like little dolls houses when there is so much space and on my return I see Danny speaking to a man of an elderly gentlemen persuasion with silver hair and bushy silver moustache and a cowboy hat and he's asking where we're from and telling us he owns the breakfast joint but his wife does the kitchen stuff and he makes sure to give us an 'obviously' look. We shoot the breeze about this and that and tells us how he and his sons know all about the mountains and hunting they've lived here all their lives and they think guns are the bees knees and having guns is imperative so that 'they' don't take over. I change the subject and tell him we're going to Inyo National Forest today and he looks at us strangely, days later we figure out Inyo National Forest covers practically most of California. The place was so popular due to his kitchen stuff wife and breakfast was a HUGE plate of steaming eggs and tomato and avocado and tacos and spicy green sauce again and I can't recall but I'm going to hazard a guess that Danny had pancakes with bacon and syrup, all washed down with filter coffee we are total coffee drinkers again at this point after a hiatus, hey but it's holidays and we have lots of walking to do although everyone seems to be drinking huge jugs of iced tea instead. There is a hodgepodge of clientele some climbers some country flowery blouse big haired types and then two skinny wide eyed English types checking out the cake selection (that's us). Breakfast is so huge I wrap my eggs in a corn taco cake and tin foil and tuck it away for a mountain walk snack. 

It was going to first be a drive to the sets of those movies in the boulders and then a climb up Mount Whitney. You've never seen so many boulders of all shapes and sizes and so round and smooth and heavy and I think again and again of the volcano or earthquake, what kind of force threw these boulders out the earth and spread them across such an area and now I'm feeling like an ant predominantly. Just a little drive out of Lone Pine you could drive your car or camper van or silver caravan and park off and sleep out, people camping with their little stoves and garden chairs. It was desert in the spring hot with red and yellow soil and blue sky like thick blue acrylic paint and dainty white clouds, boulders of all the browns and even purples with little bundles of fresh green desert plants with thick fingers and spikes and a touch of pink like the nose on a cat. I tried to imagine the volcano earthquake again that shot the rocks out the ground across this expanse of land and how long ago it was and it feels old, so old. It was the kind of rock that you stick to like a spider so can run up and down with no ropes or proper shoes free like a pin ball machine bouncing from one boulder to the next, under boulders over boulders and on top all the while looking into the distance and trying to get my head around the perspective of the huge mountain spewing these boulders, the rock biter from The Never Ending Story would be at a Roman banquet. There was a map that pin pointed where all the movies were but there was no way of telling each mound apart they all looked awesome and Jurassic, there were rocks with wind tunnels and turrets and towers and some that looked like babies asleep on the backs of mothers wrapped in blankets like in Africa, some paths were marked with little stones and others not but you could only pour yourself one way down the stone ice-cream cones like chocolate sauce, going through the cracks. There were German and American and Spanish accents chirping away as explorers peaked and scrambled like lizards. 

That's a silver caravan amongst a billion rocks

Pink nosed cactus cat

The baby on the mother's back

The baby on the mother's back

Lizard

Heat becomes extreme in the spring time desert but there was another silvery snakey road to climb up this time a real country road with no shoulders or second lanes just one thin snake up into the mountain which was Mount Whitney the highest mountain in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Winding snaking up through the boulder valley up and up until in the rearview window the valley appears behind I want to twist my neck to look round but the road is winding too and that would be deathly driving. Cars are coming down the mountain side where have they been and it's deduced there is a camp site or places in the pine forest to go with your car so we go. There's signs to go to this camp site or that area there but the road continues to snake up so up it is, there is no way you could go all this way and not go all the way up. At the top there's a car park and that's the end and then signs I've never seen before or didn't know existed... 'DO NOT LEAVE FOOD IN YOUR CAR, BEARS WILL RIP YOUR CAR UP LIKE A KNIFE THROUGH HOT BUTTER AND THEN EAT YOUR TIRES FOR DESERT' or something like that. We want to climb the mountain and there are snacks on our person but now we definitely don't want to take snacks up the mountain but also don't want to leave them in the car so we think taking it into the mountain should be okay because we Google how to respond to a bear and you can just scare away a black bear by looking big, you should always make as much noise as you can and look big. 

On the way up the snaky silver mountain road two cyclists appeared and you always think wow imagine doing that and they stop next to us now outside the mountain toilet and start to chat, again the friendliness of strangers is slightly shocking but in that nice way that makes a balloon stick to your hair. We see some very prepared climber types and assess our walking gear which consists of some good shoes, sunglasses and an all purpose blanket towel scarf that I carry always, oh and the mountain snacks and I'm convinced that's all we need but there are people with all kinds of walking apparatuses in big groups looking like they're set for Armageddon and inevitably a little doubt sets in but only on the inside. The whole surrounding is a beautiful pine forest now at the top of the mountain with red pines with dark green pines and everywhere you can smell the real fresh pine and hear the trickling of streams. There is some snow up on the very top and in patches on the sides of the mountain higher up and then sheer grey rock that encloses you, you go up into all this and after 3-4 hours walking there's the a lake and that's where we're heading.   

The walk is like a stroll that you put your knees into a bit, a winding path that goes back and forth as you climb and there are others doing it too like groups of friends or families, some grannies and little kids so we really feel capable and speed past them all on the winding path until we hear an animal sound with no one else around it sounds like the wind going through a bottle loudly and we stop in our tracks and immediately think bear! Remember to make a noise and make yourself big I had the thought of flushing the food down the toilet as if we had been busted with drugs but there was nothing to do but carry on so we did. Every now and again looking through the now steep high valley through the red old pines down down into the boulder strewn plateau we sighed about how beautiful and epic in scale and just piney fresh this all was.

The higher you get the more tired everyone is but there are still fathers with babies in baby backpacks and mothers encouraging little ones up and up until even we were tired but then spurred on by the thought of the lake. Patches of snow started to appear and the jumper came off and it felt hot, a man with all the gear asked us sternly do we have a rain jacket don't we know it could rain or even snow up on the mountain and were we prepared?? Did we have a rain jacket I said no and Danny said yes and we both looked at the blue sky and then decided he was only being concerned and he stormed off. At each bend there was a new part of the valley to see and breathe in and some pines trees were crumbling and but even that was beautiful as the new pines made their way through the earth in the new space. The sheer grey cliff walls became shorter as we neared the top 2 then 3 hours of climbing and we had left most of the people behind in our haste to reach the lake.

The magic magnified when stepping into a now level pine forest, tall strong pines surrounding in a completely silent blanket of crisp air so clean and pure it was like water that was pouring over a face turning the dust into soothing cool fresh custard that's how strong the light fresh cold clear air was pressed against the skin. There were deeper rifts of spring snow and pine bridges through some water and smooth cold grey boulders the size of the houses in Lone Pine, still winding up and up and around the pine forest then we see people with excited faces coming up at us through the trees, they had just been to the lake and were on their way back and rushing now through the trees and the pines and the boulders onto a thick coating of snow and there was the lake. 

Lone Pine Lake, and lo there was actually a lone pine on the lake. A shock of mirrored dark blue against the grey rock and baby blue sky, like when you see yourself in a mirror but don't recognise it's you straight away, with the burnt oranges of the lone pines and white snow all the colours were like a camera set to high saturation heightened by the high joy of the hot tramping up the mountain to get to this shiny dragon's jewel. There was a little girl studiously making a snowball to throw at her brother and people coming out the pine forest behind us to exclaim what we felt looking at the lake. We climbed all the way round to see the valley and the lake and sit amongst the strong wind swept yellow orange pines that had been sculpted by the elements as if they had been cut in half but they still bore strong green blue pine needles and were solid and silent giving us shade while we ate the egg taco sandwiches from breakfast and the strawberries and blueberries I had been carrying since Silverlake market and these are the best meals that I think I could ever have sitting on the edge of Lone Pine lake after that walk and that forest looking down into the valley. 

Studious snowball making 

Oh the animal sound was a marmot not a bear it's like a guinea pig just in case you were worrying.