Lone Pine, California

 

We left the Bakersfield area and moved to Lone Pine, California.  As our next stop is Death Valley this stop made sense to break up the trip.  We have never stopped here before but had driven the highway, US 395, a few times when we lived in Southern California years ago.  We found a gem, especially this time of year.  The weather was just great.  It would get up into the 60’s during the day and high 30’s at night with the skies as clear as anything.  It made for star gazing at night and great views of the mountains on both sides of town.  Lone Pine is the gateway to Mt. Whitney, highest point in the lower 48 states.

First, here are the views we had from our RV park.

We took a drive on the road to Mt. Whitney but decided to turn around before we started to get far up the mountain.  The road becomes very narrow as it climbs the mountain plus there was snow a few miles up.  I was concerned that we would not have a place to turn the big red truck around.

We stopped because the road looked like it may be a problem for the truck.  You can see the road as the two lines on the mountain.

Mt. Whitney is the rock towards the middle of the picture.

This area was used for filming of many movies and TV shows over the years. Mainly westerns were filmed here, the last one being Django Unchained.  With this film history the town has created a little film museum that is a must see.  It has to have one of the largest movie poster collections I have ever seen.  It has great merchandising items from the Hop-a-long Cassidy movies and the Lone Ranger.

Some of the movie posters

Lone Ranger exhibit

Wagon from Django Unchained

Our next stop was the Manzanar War Relocation Center.  This is one of the camps set up to house Japanese Americans on the west coast that were relocated after Pearl Harbor.  Only the auditorium building and a watch tower remain, but they do have a great museum in the auditorium and have created a driving route showing you the layout of the entire camp.

Original watch tower for the camp

Auditorium building that houses the museum

Entrance to the original camp

Recreation of a barrack from the camp

Memorial at the camp cemetery

Next up, Death Valley.

 

Route:  From Bakersfield we took Highway 58 east to Highway 14 north  to US 395 north to Lone Pine.

Bakersfield, California

 

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post, a good time to catch up.

Last we were in the San Diego area.  From there we drove north to Lake Cachuma, California.  This is a county recreation area near Santa Barbara and Solvang.  We had last been there around 35 years ago to do some tent camping.  It was sad to see how the drought has impacted this lake.  The water level is way down.  The water used to be very close to the campsites but now you have to go a substantial distance to get to the shore.  We took a drive into the Solvang/Buellton area to have lunch at Anderson’s Pea Soup, walk around Solvang and, of course, do some wine tasting. 

On a recommendation from one of our wine group friends we stopped at Lincourt Winery and were very impressed with their wines.  We joined their club as they are part of a larger wine company that will give us some good benefits when we visit the Napa area later this year. 

Lake Cachuma

From Lake Cachuma we drove towards the coast for a stop in Morro Bay, California.  We have never stopped here before but visited the area many times over the years.  We stayed at a very nice RV park near the ocean with the famous Morro Rock in our view.  The RV park was a little tight as they use every available part of land for an RV space.  Fortunately we had requested a nice pull through site so it was easy to get into.  I would not want to have tried backing into the other spaces.  We had nice time walking on the ocean and walking the waterfront with its many shops and restaurants.

View from our RV park

From Morro Bay we drove a short 30 miles to Lake Lopez which is a county recreation area near the town of Arroyo Grande, California.  Here we met up with Fran’s aunt and uncle and their family.  They all have RV’s and a couple of boats.  All together we took up 5 spaces in row.  We had a great weekend catching up with them and going out on the lake in their boats.  However, we did encounter some stressful moments trying to get into our space.  We arrived a day early, Thursday.  We had selected the largest of the sites in the loop we were staying in as a group.  The problem is the site was on a curve and the road in front of it was very narrow.  It was a back in spot and there was dip at the front of the site and a big tree on one side.  I kept trying to back our rig in but the dip was causing the bike rack on the back to hit the ground and I was just not getting the right angle to get the trailer into the spot.  After discussion and analyzing the situation we decided to take the bikes and bike rack off the trailer and to try backing from a closer angle.  This worked but it was close as the back of the trailer came very close to hitting the roadway.  It took about 30 minutes and is probably the hardest backing job I have done.

Deer roaming the park

Each day a couple of times a group of wild turkeys would walk through the RV sites.  They obviously have been fed by campers as they come right up to you expecting to be fed.  They are fairly big and very noisy, especially early in the morning.  It is really cool when they fluff their feathers.

After spending the holiday weekend at Lake Lopez we left Tuesday for Bakersfield, California to spend a week. 

Route: From Santee, California we took Highway 52 west to Interstate 805 north to Interstate 5 north to Interstate 405 north to US 101 north Highway 154 to Lake Cachuma.  From Lake Cachuma we took Highway 154 to US 101 north to Morro Bay, California.  From Morro Bay we took US 101 south to Grand Ave and followed that to Lake Lopez.  From Lake Lopez we got back on US 101 south to Highway 166 east to Highway 99 north to Highway 58 east to Fairfax Road in Bakersfield.

San Diego California

 

We are finishing up our two week stay here in the San Diego area.  We are staying just outside the city in a town called Santee.  It is a very nice RV park that is part of a large regional park.  We stayed here a couple of years ago and really enjoyed our stay.  The park is great for walking and biking and is close to all the San Diego things to see and do.  The weather, during this stay, was typical Southern California, 70’s during the day and 40’s at night.

We did take some excursions while here.  First was a drive into the mountains to see the towns of Alpine (nothing to really see) and Julian (great little town for a stop).  The weather that day was a little cold with some rain so our stay in Julian was short.  We did have a great lunch at an old café and took a couple of slices of famous Julian pie home (apple/blueberry and apple crunch). 

We met up with some friends who are fellow full timers who we follow on Facebook.  We met them a couple or years ago while in Lake of the Ozarks and have followed each others travels since.  They are staying up the Interstate in Menifee so they came down to catch up and have lunch.

We took a drive out to Point Loma and Cabrillo National Monument as we had never stopped to see this area before.  It was a gorgeous day so it made for great viewing from the point.  From here you can see all the naval operations on North Island, downtown San Diego and Coronado. 

The lighthouse on the point

View of North Island (Naval base)

From there we drove over to Shelter Island and had a nice lunch at the Blue Wave grill.

Our next excursion was to see the Mission Basilica of San Diego.  This was the first mission founded by Father Junipero Serra in California.  Most of the mission had been destroyed over the years but they were able to use part of the original façade, some of the bells, the tile for the mission floor and some wood beams.

Inside the mission

The façade and bells

Statue of Father Serra.  He was only 5 foot 2 inches tall

From there we drove into San Diego and walked around the downtown area.  We visited the Gaslamp District which is a 16 block area that has numerous bars and restaurants.  We had lunch, outdoors, at Café 21.  Very nice lunch.

One of the neat old buildings in the Gaslamp Quarter

We leave on Thursday for the Santa Barbara area to spend the weekend then Morro Bay, Lake Lopez (meet up with Fran’s cousins) and then Bakersfield.

We are coming up our four year anniversary of “Life on the Road”.  Look for my next post regarding this milestone.