Road Trip!

We're on the road again, this time on home turf in California. We started off on a detour to Carpinteria, near Santa Barbara, for the Avocado Festival. We then cut over to the 395 via Ojai, the Los Padres National Forest and up to Bakersfield. We drove through Sequoia National Forest and spent a night in Ridgecrest, next to a huge naval weapons center in the Mojave Desert. The weather has been sunny and COLD. Yesterday, we drove up the 395, a beautiful drive in the Owens Valley (made famous as the valley Los Angeles stole water from in Polanski's "Chinatown", which is based on a true story). Owens Lake is the scene of a big water steal, diverting water from the once-lush valley to the budding metropolis. It's now a saline-alkaline stretch of desert with a fascinating history.

We also visited Manzanar, where 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. You can drive through the camp, although the buildings are no longer there, and there's a very good visitor's center which shows what the camp used to look like. Isolated and spartan. There's also an obelisk memorial for those who died in the camp, which looks stunning against the mountain backdrop.

We passed through Lone Pine, where everyone is getting ready for the annual film festival, then through Bishop where there are two businesses of note: a great independent book store on the main street and Erick Schat's Bakery which serves a mean sandwich.

Last night we stayed in June Lake, a remote lake off the 395, and watched "The Birdman of Alcatraz" with Burt Lancaster in preparation for visiting Alcatraz when we get to San Francisco later this week. Good movie, which we followed up with Mad Men.

After an uneventful stay in June Lake, we explored Mono Lake this morning, and it's definitely one of the strangest places in the States. We then headed to Bodie, a mining ghost town now a historic park. Luckily, by the time we went back to Mono Lake, the snow had melted in Tioga Pass and we could drive to Yosemite through the western side of the mountains. It's a beautiful drive and we reached Yosemite Valley by dusk, but all the hotels were fully booked. Here we are in Mariposa, about to call it a night. Tomorrow we head back to Yosemite and then onwards, back on the road...