Carson City, NV
We have moved on from Topaz Lake to Carson City NV, where we are grateful guests of The Nugget Casino, which has a parking lot where RVers may stay at no cost for up to three days. Mighty kind of them.
We spent the day in nearby Reno today, looking for art (and found a little that was nice, but only a little) and having lunch with an old friend and his wife. I’m not sure exactly how long it was that we last saw each other, but lets just say we have both added a little grey to our palette in the meantime. I quite enjoyed that, and enjoyed walking around the city as well.
Back home (in the casino parking lot) I spent a little time working on some photographs taken back at Topaz Lake. I found these flowers very interesting.
I was somewhat pleased with this photograph of the view from where we camped, looking away from the lake. An interesting sky makes so much difference!
I’ve flagged this one for a more serious processing effort at some point in the future.
Beachcombers hair
We drove by a sign in Minden that we both found pretty funny.
It made me think immediately of an old TV series called The Beachcombers, and whether I’d want one of their haircuts.
I’ll have “The Relic”, thanks.
Mystery Photo Number Three
What is this? Please leave a comment to share your guess.
Coleville CA and Topaz Lake NV
We had a lovely time boondocking in the Alabama Hills, but it was time to move on. In part that was to get closer to Reno in anticipation of receiving an iPad at the Apple Store there. It is a major expense for us while we are in pauper mode, but if I am going to find a living in the mobile space this is a must-have device. So off we went to Coleville for a couple days at pay campground called Meadow Cliff RV Park.
The drive was really, really beautiful. We were out of the desert after a couple months of acclimating to pastel colours and everything looked extraordinarily vivid to me. Beyond that, the scenery was just really quite lovely, and every mile or so I’d exclaim again about something I’d love to have photographed.
Meadow Cliff is quite a new campground, and it shows. The people are helpful and enthusiastic and the premises are clean and new. Our spot was large and easy to get into. Power was good. There were two sewer hookups in order to accommodate motorhomes with a toad as easily as a truck and trailer.
They boast about wifi access at every spot and certainly we had an excellent connection. Their own connection to the Internet was mediocre. It was slower than we’ve had most places and it paused fairly often. Still, it was very nice to be on wifi for a couple days so we could do our itunes updates and other things we dare not do with our 3G mifi.
A few days ago we headed out to Topaz Lake for some boondocking. We grabbed some gas first, holding our noses and paying about $4 per gallon instead of <$3.30 which we have always managed before. A few miles down the road (but across the state line into NV) we found diesel at $3 per gallon. Grrr!
The motor on our leveling jacks gave out as we were setting up at Topaz Lake. I thought at first we were fully extended since we were backed into an uphill and needed more than the usual elevation from the front jacks, but I was able to continue extending them manually. I’ve written our dealer to find out if there is a fuse controlling the jacks but I haven’t heard back yet.
Our spot is peaceful and quiet and surrounded by sage, really quite lovely except that we have no Verizon coverage here so we have no Internet except on our phones, which have AT&T coverage. The iPad has come in and almost everything I want to do on it needs connectivity so I’m not too pleased about our lack of it. The AT&T service is a bit spotty here also, fading in and out for no apparent reason.
Temperatures have been cool, approaching freezing at night and into the low twenties during the day. It is nice to have a break from the heat we have had recently.
The Alabama Hills
We have spent the last few days wandering and enjoying the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California. I wondered why hills in California were named for Alabama. Nicole tells me that they are not. They are for some reason named after a war ship that was named after Alabama. Whatever the reason for the name, I am enjoying my time here very much. The temperatures are moderate, the wind, while high at times, is not constant, and the biting insects don’t seem to know about this place.
Click for larger version
One of the first things I noticed arriving here was how good it smelled. At first I thought it was the wildflowers, and perhaps at time that is part of it, but more often it is the sage. I remember picking sage in B.C. and hunting for occasional knee high plants. It is not like that here. The sage bushes here are plentiful and sometimes taller than I am, with gnarled trunks remeniscent of ancient junipers.
Nicole did her best to look like an expert sage picker, but I noticed she had instructions written on her hand.
Here is my rendition of the most photographed rocks in the hills. Indeed, during several visits I have made to this spot I saw many people who basically arrived, photographed this arch a few times, and left. Such a pity as there is so much more to see!
The light is usually very challenging. Rocks in shadow look very flat, and the sun is harsh whether high in the sky or not. Clouds have been rare. This photograph below would have been so much better if I could have arranged for some softer light!
We are expecting stormy weather, possibly with rain tomorrow and I’m pretty excited about that! That is partly because of the prospect of softer light, but also because I’d like to see what these rocks look like when wet.
Well, it has taken me hours to get these photographs to upload through the very tenuous connection we have to the Internet right now, so I’ll end here.
Movie Road
Right now we’re boondocking just off Movie Road in Lone Pine, California. This morning I looked out the big window on the door side of the trailer and saw this:
Mount Whitney is the highest point in the lower 48 states (this picture's for you, Elisabeth!)
A pretty nice view to wake up to, isn’t it? Our friend Elisabeth has fond memories of seeing this mountain one December, when it was covered in snow. It’s not so snowy now, but imposing-looking all the same.
Right after breakfast Frank and I went out exploring a bit along Movie Road. Lots of films (mostly westerns) have been shot around here, hence the road’s name. It is a landscape unlike any other I’ve seen, and I’m still marvelling that yesterday morning I was looking at the weirdness of the Trona Pinnacles and yesterday afternoon I was in among rocks that look like they’ve been squeezed out of the earth while still wet.
Frank took a lot of photos and will no doubt be posting some of his soon. In the meantime here are a couple of mine.
A view I discovered while waiting for Frank to finish taking pictures of the Moebius Arch
Can’t you just see the stagecoach being robbed down there, and then a posse of sheriff’s men riding full speed after the thieves?
There is a lot more vegetation here than there was in the Trona area (in fact, we’re camped not too far from a creek that is surrounded by lush trees and bushes). Many of the desert plants are in bloom, and as the day warms up they become focal points for large numbers of pollinating insects. Some of the flowers are so tiny they’re hard to see, and then there are the fabulous cactus blooms and large yellow poppy-like flowers. So much variety.
This last photo was taken just a few yards from the previous one. These plants seem to grow on pure stone.
Time to make some supper now — but perhaps there will be time to get out in the morning again tomorrow, before the predicted windstorm blows in….
Boondocking in the High Sierras
Each time we move on to a new location I realize there was more I wanted to write about the old one but never got around to. I suppose that is just the way of it. Anyhow, farewell to the Searles valley and the Trona Pinnacles.
Perhaps my strongest memories of the area will concern the wind. When the wind was slow or absent, as it often was, the desert was absolutely silent. Just as often however it was so windy that I grew weary of noise in my ears, and the howl and shaking of trailer keeping us up at night. Interesting too was the way that a strong wind would sometimes arrive and pass in the space of a minute (a treacherous thing for the trailer awning).
I found it a difficult place to make photographs. So much of it is nearly the same colour and tone that getting any contrast is difficult, except where it comes from the sun. But the light of the sun was almost always very harsh, as there was rarely any significant cloud in the sky. On the one overcast day we did have I took advantage of the soft light to make some closeup shots of the lichen and rock of the pinnacles.
I love how difficult it is to perceive the scale of this image.
So now we are in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, CA. We had a lovely drive aside from the part where the truck overheated right near where we are now camped and we had to wait more than an hour for it to cool down again. I’m not sure why it happened. We’ve driven faster on steeper grades in the past, though perhaps not at this elevation.
At Slab City we were below sea level. At the pinnacles we were about 2000 feet higher, and the weather was much more temperate as a result. Now we are at about 4000 feet of elevation, and the nightly lows will be as little as 6 degrees over the next few days, and the highs are all quite pleasant indeed. 
As with our last camp, there is no television reception and no AT&T cell service. Our Verizon based Internet access is working once again, so we are not totally out of touch, but only barely. It took multiple attempts to get these small photographs uploaded.
The surrounding hills and mountains are simply beautiful, and there seems to be quite a variety wild flowers in bloom. Each desert we visit is different from the one before, something I naively did not expect. I’m looking forward to exploring this one in the days to come.
Camped in the lake
A view from the middle of the lake
It is amazing to me how many different landscapes there are in the desert, and how much of the landscape is dry lake beds. Right now we’re camped in Searles Lake, which once had water as deep as 660 feet.
Temperatures are up a little this weekend, but will move down again on Monday (33C today and tomorrow, which makes it a little too warm to spend much time outside unless you’re in the shade of the trailer awning). Morning is a beautiful time here; cool with pink light and blue shadows for a minute or two around sunrise, and then the muted earth tones and soft light that precedes the harsher light and washed out colours of later in the day. There are birds here that twitter in the morning and the early evening, and a raven has checked out our trailer a couple of times, swooping in close for a good look.
Tomorrow will be a painting day for me, I think. While we were in Slab City I was trying to work on a painting of a view of Algonquin Park that my friend Karen sent me as a challenge (I sent her a photo of a desert lake — with water! — that I took in New Mexico as her reciprocal challenge). It was really hard to get into the colours and trees of that northern landscape while I was broiling in the desert heat and light. I’ve set aside that picture to work on again another time.
I’m liking how the clouds cast dramatic shadows over the landscape here, and I’m planning to paint some shadowed mountains tomorrow. There’s a good view from the door of the trailer, so I don’t have to go far. Hope the wind doesn’t kick up in the morning; I never have enough hands to paint and hold down my canvas and palette at the same time….
Trona Pinnacles
Home for the next while is in the high desert near the Trona Pinnacles. I don’t know what this place is like during the winter season, but right now it is completely silent. Aside from a car going by once in a while we are completely alone. We can see for miles in all directions just to be sure.
Some key differences between here and the slabs….
- No garbage lying around
- No military helicopters flying low and shaking the trailer
- No mortar testing shaking the ground
- No shade (not a bush in sight)
- No generators running day and night
- No company
The desert is more hostile here however. Nicole has already discovered that even the smallest of plants are prickly so it pays to watch where you put your feet … even paying attention to the 2″ high plants.
Another difference from the slabs is that as far as I know there is no water nearby. I expect there will be less animal life as a result. We’ve seen a raven and a few lizards so far. I don’t think I’ve seen any flying insects yet, which is fine with me.
So, after a couple nights in town we are back to carefully rationing our use of power and water. There are no TV stations here (first time since we began) and as mentioned yesterday, no service to our cell phones either. Happily we are still able to get online.
California High Desert
We left Slab City yesterday and travelled north to Inyokern, where we are staying at the El Solana RV park. There is no wifi (to my surprise, nothing in our price range offers wifi in this part of the world even though it has been ubiquitous elsewhere) but it is otherwise very nice. Nicole read one review that called it creepy. We find that a bit mystifying. It is clean and quiet and has many shade trees. Really very nice aside from no wifi.
We’ll stay here again tonight and then head out into the desert to some BLM land near Trona where we scouted a boondocking site today. The desert is beautiful and there are some interesting land formations I am keen to photograph. I didn’t plan on making photographs today but when the sky put on a light show for us I couldn’t resist.
Unlike Slab City where we were surrounded by other people, it looks as though we will be very much alone at this spot. I’m looking forward to it. It looks like our AT&T phones will not work but our Verizon mifi will.
