We came up on a young couple (friends, not married) staggering up the road in our lane. We slowed down, and it seemed the girl was in some distress. He was screaming at the vehicles as they stopped and maneuvered around them. Wade, sensing a lady in distress, suggested that we turn around to see if we could be of some assistance. We passed again, and Wade saw the guy give an open handed slap to the gal. As we passed, he invited us to get out and fight (guess he didn't know who he was fooling with), while she told us she did not need any help and that we should just go on. Wade called the police, and they found them. Seemed they had been "adrinking" (that's Southern for saying they had consumed too much cheap beer). Both had softened their stories for the cops, and we were able to give the police a statement to help them determine if they were going to charge him. He apparently had a long record of misbehaving.
Our civic duty completed, we headed on down the road. Spent the night at Bridgeport, CA. Started the day out with a soak at Travertine Hot Springs.
The hot water source deposits minerals and builds these 15 or so feet high mounds of travertine, then flows down the center and finds it way to these lovely pools.
Here is a ground view of the hot water cascading down the end of the travertine mound and into the pools.
We found this neat small pool of hot water down past the main soaking area at Travetine.
Then we traveled on further south toward Bishop. While in Bishop, we picked up some sourdough bread and cookies from a great german bakery called, Erick Schat's Bakkery. It was very good. Then we took in some more hot water at the Hot Creek area.
Stopped to take the waters here at Lil' Hot Creek.
Plumbing was very neat here.
Here's the view from the Hot Tub as it fills with hot water.
After we got our soaks in, we headed on toward Death Valley. One thing that we did want to see was an arch that was pictured on the new National Park pass that I got at Muir Woods. All it said about the arch was Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, CA.
We got the map out and found Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills, which were on the way to Death Valley, The arch was not listed on our map. The Alabama Hills, which are foothills to Mount Whitney - the highest mountain in the lower 48, have been used in many old westerns, and Roy Rogers dedicated a monument there to the movies that had been made in the area. Recently, the movie "Tremors" was made here, so if you remember those rocks they were jumping around on, you have a picture of the Alabama Hills.
John Wayne is hanging out up in them rocks, waiting to shoot the bad guys.
Here's Wade trying out for a role in "Tremors IV."
You know guys don't ask for directions, and we didn't. We took the picture on the card and tried to locate the arch based on the hills in the foreground and the Sierras in the back ground. When we got to the area that seemed correct, we parked the H3 and headed out.
We named this the PAC MAN Rock.
We thought it would be simple, we left without using the GPS to mark the truck, so we could find it again. We didn't take any water (or beer) with us, not such a bright thing in the desert. We had a great time though searching around, scrambling over and around rocks, looking for this arch, and exercising our unique male sense of direction.
We were not on any trail, just wandering about, looking for the arch. We'd think we see an arch up ahead, walk that way only to find that it was no arch, just appeared that way because of other rocks or shadows.
Wade said I was not to sit on this arch and break it.
Finally, we gave up and were heading back in the direction that we thought the truck was in when we came upon a trail. Since it was going the general area that we sensed the truck was in, we followed it. Not too much later, we discovered the arch - from the back side from which most visitors discover it. Took some pictures, but the camera battery was failing.
Here's the view with the Sierras to our back.
This is a view looking toward the Sierras. The view on the card would require a climb and scramble up some rocks in order to view the Sierras through the arch. I was not up the challenge.
We kept hearing about the petroglyphs in the area, and we finally found one.
Some folks we meet at the arch told us about heading on up the Mt. Whitney Portal road. We drove on up the road, driving past signs saying the road was closed due to damage from winter storms - do not enter. We were finally stopped by the snow blocking the road. Thought what a lovely area this would to be explore and turned around and headed toward Death Valley. We will return to this spot later on in our travels.
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