If you've read much of this blog at all you know my wife and I really love to travel. But now we have a dog and were unsure about what kind of a traveler he might be. We wanted to give him a trial so we planned a little trip to Bishop, CA. We decided to drive west across Death Valley then pick up highway 395 and go up to Bishop. Oddly Google Maps says it is 223 miles and coming back via a different route is also 223 miles! Oh well.
So last Tuesday we headed out for a planned 3 day trip. It turned out really well. I've never been in that part of the country and it was really quite beautiful and a bit strange. It's hard to tell from the maps but 395 runs quite close to the mountains on the west and a small river, the Owens River, on the east. Because of the river it is also quite green with lots of farming. I took this photo of the mountains when we stopped for moment.
I have to admit that I didn't get any photos of the river. It was quite small and I just didn't manage to get a good shot of it. My wife had made room reservations at a motel in Bishop and we found it with no problem. It was a nice place to have the dog but I really couldn't recommend it otherwise! They had fake wood floors that had seen much better days and the door had definitely been broken into on several occasions. However we didn't really want a fancy place in case Gus decided to 'mark his territory'. It turns out he just did his business on his leash outside just like you would want him to do. We ended up having a cheese and salami dinner in our room.
Wednesday morning we headed up 395 a bit more to visit Mono Lake. Mono Lake is a saline soda lake which ends up with really odd salt formations. It was quite interesting.
Then we moved south again to stop in Mammoth Lakes for lunch. The Mammoth Ski Area is nearby and we got a real tree fix. We stopped at Liberty Sports Bar & Grill partially because they had outdoor seating and we could bring Gus. It turned out to be a great stop. The food was excellent and the beer was pretty good too! They even came up with a bowl of water for Gus. After lunch we drove back to Bishop and just looked around town a bit. For dinner we found a Mexican restaurant with outdoor seating but unfortunately it wasn't as much of a hit.
Thursday was our day to drive home and we wanted to take highway 168 for a couple reasons. It is not heavily used AND it leads to the home of the Bristlecone Pine up in the Inyo National Forest. We decided we'd try the road, it was paved, and if it was ok we might make it up to visit some of the pines. Well, it was narrow, totally curvy, constantly going up and had no guardrails but there wasn't much traffic so we made it! We looked around a bit but they recommend that older folk not spend too much time at the altitude. In fact my wife said her vision was kind of off at first but it cleared up after half an hour or so. Anyway I took a few photos and we headed back down.
Of course I had to catch a photo of the GPS showing our altitude!
10,027 ft (3,056 m) - a record for the truck anyway! There were some good views coming down the mountain but we also met 4 or 5 vehicles coming up. Who knew we were such early risers. Anyway we were back to 168 going east. We got to 266 and kept going east. We went through a town we've heard of, Lida, which turned out to be 4 or 5 houses just off the road. Finally, about 11:00 we got to US 95.
US 95 is a major north-south highway around here and it was busy! There were lots of semi trucks and to make it better they are working on the road. We made it most of the way home before we got stopped for about 15 minutes waiting for one-way traffic coming from the other direction. In the end we got home about 2:30 pm.
Really it was quite a good trip. Gus, the dog, turns out to ride in the back seat quite quietly. He acted well at the motel and was just fine in the restaurants. So, now when we want to go visit the kids, we don't have to worry about him. What a deal!
Thanks for stopping by. Keep washing those hands!
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