Okay...continuing where I left off yesterday. After we left Tucson, we headed to Prescott, AZ....a very popular retirement town. Pulling into town, the first thing we noticed was the greenery. Unlike Tucson, there were trees (not cactus) and grass. It wasn't Oregon, but it was a big improvement over the lower Sonoran desert. Again, I'll give you a synopsis here....we didn't care for the town. Sure they had lots of chain stores and restaurants, but the housing was ugly and overpriced and the downtown left a lot to be desired. Lots of "characters" walking around the town square. We found out later that Prescott is a big "rehab" town, with clinics everywhere and a huge VA facility. Not much culture, no upscale restaurants that we could find and here's an unusual thing we noticed.....no one was friendly. We're used to everyone speaking when you pass. Not here. We walked around the town square two nights and not a person spoke, except for one couple with a dog. So much for a very highly rated town. And one more thing....we bought gas at an Arco station the night before we left. My debit card got rejected (remember the commercial..."You've been declined"), so I used my American Express card. Later back in the room, I called my bank to find out why my card had been rejected and I found out that someone had tried to put in a charge for $100 on my card. Their system caught it and it wasn't paid. How do they know? I immediately cancelled the card. Then I wondered if this person/recovering addict at the station had also tried to use my Amex card. Yep...it turns out they had tried, but the software program again caught it. That card was also cancelled on the spot. So much for Prescott. We packed up and blew out of that town in a hurry.
The drive to Bishop was a long one....we sort of back-tracked through Area 51 part of the way still looking for spy planes or aliens, then cut up into the beautiful Owens Valley and arrived at the quaint little town of Bishop, CA. Bishop is a hub for back packers hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, rock climbers, ski bums, photographers, fly fishermen (some of the best trout lakes in the country are there) and people who just generally love the outdoors. I've know about Bishop for over 40 years, since I attended a photography workshop led by the late Galen Rowell. Galen put Bishop on the map....and his studio is still there and doing a big business. The town is surrounded by some of the tallest peaks in the Sierra's...including the tallest peak in the states...Mt. Whitney at 14,500'. To say the area is beautiful is a huge understatement. I posted some pictures, which I know don't do it justice. I had to take quick snapshots as we drove along....something I really hate to do. As Arnold would say...."I'll be back" (think an Austrian dialect).
From Bishop, we headed home and drove through the most beautiful mountain range we've seen since Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France. Huge snow-capped peaks, beautiful mountain lakes, valleys full of wild flowers, rock formations that look fake and so much more. One of our stops was at Convict Lake. On the trail around the lake, Tuck decided he would run down the rocky slope and dive in...with me following and dropping the "F-bomb" at full volume. He was lucky. The water was freezing, the wind was gusting to 65mph and the rocks on the shore were huge. He found a log and somehow pulled himself back up on the shore. If the log hadn't been there, yours truly was going in after him. That would have been interesting.
Anyway, I digress. If you can't make it to the Alps....this drive will do just fine folks. For more than six hours, we drove through scenic valleys and high up on the mountain passes on one lane roads. Absolutely stunning. Oh yeah....we'll be back.
As a side trip on the way through the valley, we decided to take a slight detour (actually a 15 mile drive over a one-lane dirt road) and visit the most well-preserved ghost town in the country....Bodie. It's an old mining town that was deserted in the 30's, but most of the buildings date back to the 1850's. The US Parks department fortunately took it over in the 50's and prevented it from being looted and ruined. Rangers are posted there every day, rain or shine. If you can get there through 10' of snow in January...you'll find a ranger there to lead a tour. It's very cool and I hope anyone reading this will make the trek. You not only get to see the buildings up close and personal, but everything inside the houses is exactly as the residents left them. Plates still on the tables, school books still on the desks, etc. The residents just up and left. Boom....done. The rangers don't know exactly why everyone left at about the same time, but they did. I did some research and the best scenario is that the gold mine closed suddenly and that was it. I posted some pictures to give you an idea of how this amazing little town looks today. Enjoy.
That's about it for now. We headed home after leaving Bodie and got home late after driving around beautiful Lake Tahoe on the way. Man...what a day for scenery!
Cheers!
Wayne, Claudia and Tuck