The Alabama Hills, with their fabulous rock formations, beckoned us again today. This time we took a road called Turtle Creek into the Hills and were rewarded with more spectacular views of terrain apparently perfect for western movies. Many bad guys could have hidden in the rocks here, only to descend for nefarious purposes. The rock formations have subtle changes as you pass through each canyon; one will have spherical boulders that resemble mushrooms while another will exhibit nothing but cubic boulders that resemble giant stacks of Legos. It is pretty amazing. Roads are okay if you are not in a hurry.
After our cruise through the Hills, we headed south on US-395 toward Olancha which is Spanish for nothing. We spotted a giant bottling facility for Crystal Geyser water along the road. We have no idea where they get their water because there certainly ain’t any around here. In Olancha we turned northeast on CA-190 around Owens Dry Lake. Before the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power arrived, there was a lake here. Unfortunately for locals, DWP acquired all the water rights and a substantial portion of the land in the Owens Valley, diverted the available water into their aqueduct which zings the water to the thirsty landscaping in the Los Angeles basin. As we drove along the edge of the non-lake, white dust was being propelled across the road at sandblasting speeds as it migrated from one part of the pan to another.
The scenery as we went around the lake was outstanding. The mountains on the east side of the Owens Valley offer a more rounded and quite colorful alternative to the jagged granite of the Sierras on the west side. From the east side of the non-lake, the Sierras and Mount Whitney are the horizon features, the Alabama Hills fill the middle of the picture and the dry lake makes up the foreground. The contrast between the dead-flat lake bottom down at 4,000′ to the top of Whitney at 14,450′ is stark.
We circled the former lake and ended up headed back toward Lone Pine and our RV park. We spotted considerable evidence of surface and hard rock mining in the mountains east of the dry pan. Nobody is mining much around here now although we did pass a sulfate production facility. I was a failure at chemistry in school many years ago so I have no idea what sulfate is used for other than confusing science students.
We got some Alabama Hills and Owens Lake pictures that you can see if you click here