Off to the southern Sierra Nevada

Panorama from Lower Gray's Meadow

Storm over the Sierra Nevada range

Today we headed for the Onion Valley just north of Lone Pine on the eastern side of the SierraNevada range. This is about 270 miles from Thousand Oaks but a good drive on freeway surfaces all the way. We passed through Mojave with its well known parked rows of mothballed and decommissioned commercial airline jets including at least one jumbo! The Edwards Air force Base is nearby. Traffic was unbelievable until we got to Mojave with a ten mile backup of all three lanes delaying us for a long time. However, beyond Mojave the desert scenery is fabulous with magnificent glacial formations and impressive signs of past volcanic activity revealed by ancient cinder cones and massive lava fields. The campsite for the first night was unexpectedly devoid of much in the way of birds until dusk when I spotted a Lesser Nighthawk and just on dark a Common Poorwill that almost brushed my side as it flew past low to the ground at about 3 metres distance! A couple of Common Raven livened the camp at dawn - their baritone croaks rather more impressive than the unexpectedly insipid calls of the American Crow.

Subaru WRX and campsite 46 at Lower Gray's Meadow

Trout stream behind campsite

Our first camp was lower down than we had intended for our first night because thundery conditions built up in the afternoon and we could see that it was raining in the mountains. We decided to go for a site in the foothills (lower Grays Meadow) only a short distance out from the township of Independence. Later we learnt that two scouts were killed this same afternoon by lightning strike somewhere in the Sequoia National Park to the west of us.

Sleepy James in carrypack