Lone Pine and 29 Palms

Hi Arthur, hi everybody.  It's been a little while since we blogged, sorry.  But, we're still here and having a good time.  As my cousin Jay says, it looks like we've been stuck in Death Valley.  In spite of its inhospitality, I loved it and thought it quite beautiful.  But off we went on the road to Lone Pine where we had a night with our favourite  RV Park.  These people really made an effort to make the environment pleasant; even going to far as to have a petting zoo and a nice play area for the kids.  Here is the front office.  There was a pool and a spa too and I think it was about the first one we've seen in working order.  

This was just a strange and weirdly beautiful white-barked tree.  

Their resident tortoise.

One of their cabins with the Sierras in the background.  

Now this is a chair in the Lone Pine Film Museum.  It turns out that heaps and heaps of the early B Westerns made for Saturday cinema leaders and later for television were made in Lone Pine.  Between something called the Alabama Hills and the High Sierras was the perfect setting for such westerns with rocks for the bad guys to hide behind, little box canyons and room to run the horses.  They featured, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Hop-a-long Cassidy, Tonto and many, many more.  Here is one of their strange chairs made from the horns of cattle, I presume. 

And this ia typical load of guns, holsters, bullets and the necessary hat.  There is also a complete outfit worn by John Wayne in one of his westerns.  Oh yes.  

This bit of the High Sierras is quite jagged and rough looking in spite of the little bits of softening snow.  

Back to food.  I can't remember where we had breakfast, but Clancy still fancied the pancakes.  My omelet is a 4-egg one and we ate the balance for dinner.  The other thing there is a variety of hash brown potato.  

We drove down one side of Owen's Lake coming into town and then up the other side on our way out in the morning.  It was really pretty but there were no places to pull over for snapshots.  A common problem.  Some of the colour is caused by algie and some by salt and other chemicals.

The long road forward with the marching pylons never very far away.

Somewhere.....

Entering Cactus country.  (A non-official title.) 

These are actually Joshua Trees although we didn't know it at the time. 

Gorgeous legs....on the trees I mean!

A close up of the Cholla cactus.  Pronounced choy ya.

While I did a spot of banking, Clancy spotted this seemingly homeless man with a crutch having a siesta out of the sun in the heat of the day.  It was really hot too.  

We arrived at Twenty-Nine Palms just after 5 p.m. and got this for a site.  It was about 38 degrees outside, maybe more.  We had a little talk with Jessie on Skype and then went swimming.   Although the air conditioning in the RV worked, it was really noisy and we could barely talk over it.  We even had to leave it on at night and it made for rather poor sleeps as it came on and off with the thermostat.  

The next day we planned to drive through Joshua Tree National Park so onwards we go.