On the 29th we enjoyed the local area. We walked around the town of Lone Pine, CA. Lone Pine is near the Alabama Hills, known for the movies filmed in them.
We also visited Manzanar. This was a "relocation" center used in WWII to house Japanese. Some of the people housed here were 2nd generation American citizens. It was an eye opening experience. We were lucky in our timing because a 94 year old gentleman was speaking the day we were there. He had been in Manzanar in his 20's and has since returned and helps restore it, using his first hand knowledge to make sure it is historically accurate. One of the comments he made was that he has always loved America - he did before he went into Manzanar and he does now.
https://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm
On the 30th, Halfway Harry rode 2 1/2 hours to show us around the area. We originally planned on riding around the Alabama Hills, but due to road construction we re-routed, which was a good thing because we later found out the road was closed due to winter storms.
During our ride, we hit a low of 35 degrees and snow. We were at about 7,500' elevation. It was cold! Once we dropped down, it warmed up. Harry hit more snow on his way home. We appreciate Harry taking time out of his day to spend time with us.
After Harry left for home we drove up to the Alabama Hills in the pickup. We did some off-road exploring and hiking. It was easy to see why western and science-fiction movies were filmed here.
On the 31st, we got up early to explore Death Valley.
We hit a low elevation of -290 and 87 degrees. We were fortunate enough to still see some of the "super bloom" caused by the heavy rainfall earlier in the year. We did a lot of driving and a lot of hiking. We squeezed a lot into one day. We saw everything we wanted to except Scotty's Castle, which is closed due to flooding, and the floating rocks. We would have had to drive 27 miles over rough road to get to them and didn't want to do that since we need to keep the pickup in good shape for the rest of our trip.
Today, April 1, we took the day off to reorganize the trailer and rest a bit. Tomorrow we head to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam.
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