On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
?BillinGlendaleCA
It’s about a 300 mile drive up to the trailhead at Little Lakes Valley. Myself and the other photographers planned to meet at noon at a park on the north side of Lone Pine. While I’ve driven up to the Owens Valley quite a few times, I’d missed some interesting sights along the way, so this was an opportunity to photograph them. The first up was Uniroyal Gal in Pearsonville. Pearsonville is about 10 miles north of the 14/395 split near Ridgecrest. I’ve passed it many times and never had the time to stop, so I took this opportunity to stop and get some shots. Next up was the Sponge Bob house in Cartago at the southern end of the Owens Lake. Cartago was the western port on Owens Lake(back before we stole the water fair and square) for silver from the mines in the hills east of Owens Lake. The silver was then loaded on a train for transport to Los Angeles. One of the buildings used to be a beef jerky store and has a rather unusual shape and is painted bright yellow and has some interesting sculpture in front.
It was about 2am by the time we’d descended from Little Lakes Valley and back into Bishop. Half of the group continued down to Los Angeles, another photographer and I decided to sleep in our cars on BLM land in the Bishop Tuff north of Bishop. I awoke to see the sun shining off the tops of the eastern Sierra and got my camera out to shoot a scene similar to the shot of Mt. Whitney I’d shot a year to the day earlier in the Alabama Hills about 60 miles to the south. The clouds that had been an impediment to our Milky Way shots the night before became an added bonus to the sun’s glow off the granite peaks. My colleague was in search of the Sky Rock petroglyphs and was flying his drone around to try to find them, I headed back to LA with a few stops along the way. My first stop was a small, semi-ghost town just to the northeast of Bishop called Laws. Laws was on of the old railway stations, much like Kearsarge, but has been fully restored and is now a museum. It wasn’t open yet, so I took some exterior photos in the morning light. As I drove back to Los Angeles, I decided to make a stop at the old Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery just north of Independence. I’d seen photos of the really nice building there and the pool in front of it and wanted to try to see if I could get some shots with reflections.
Uniroyal Gal in Pearsonville.
Sponge Bob House in Cartago.
Sunrise on the eastern face of the Sierra.
The rays of the sun are about to reach the Owens Valley.
Restored train station at Laws.
One of the trains at the Laws Railway Museum.
Old Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery.
Old Mt. Whitney Fish Hatchery shot with my IR camera using the IRChrome filter.
Baud
Why does Black Lives Matter own land in the California desert?
Cool shots. Half expecting Uniroyal Gal to come to life.
JPL
Sponge Bob lives at the bottom of the ocean, not in Law..
The nice thing about your late night/early morning adventures, is that you can make stops along the way, and not have to worry about crowds. Great pictures.
UncleEbeneezer
Did you go inside the hatchery? It’s a pretty cool place with alot of interesting info.
opiejeanne
@JPL: Law is Spongebob’s summer place.
opiejeanne
Great collection of the oddities along that route. When the kids were young, or was it when we only had one?, we were staying in June Lake and picked up the LA Times outside the Schatz Bakery (long, long gone) and read that some miscreants had blown up the gates of the dam in the Owens Valley.
Geminid
Thank you for the beautiful pictures!
stinger
People are weird. Nature is grand. Also, vice versa.
Jerzy Russian
There is a dome house in the Point Loma neighborhood of San Diego that vaguely resembles the construction of that yellow house featured above. The owner used to give tours (and possibly still does), so we went inside. It was a. very interesting place. The Point Loma house had a normal exterior paint job, although it could have changed in the years since.
Betty
Some quirky places. Lovely shots.
JaneE
I went inside the Whitney hatchery when I was very young, so probably about 65 years ago. They gave visitors a walk through of the areas where the trays of fertilized eggs and fingerlings (child size pinky fingerlings) were growing. They stopped that after they had problems with some infections in the fingerlings and needed a more sterile environment. The pond outside had huge fish (24 inches or better) that I think were the breeding stock. When we moved up here in 92 one of our day trips was a visit to the hatchery to feed the fish in the pond. They behaved more like koi than trout. The whole thing got washed out in a flash flood several years ago and all the fish died.
dr. bloor
Uniroyal Gal looks like a hitchhiker intent on burying you and your family in a shallow grave after putting the knife to you.
Benw
Man when you take a picture of the sky you don’t fuck around!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
It’s the People’s Republic of California, why would this surprise you? Thanks
@JPL:
It was Cartago, not Laws and it’s right next to Owens Lake, good enough of govm’t work. Yeah, but stuff isn’t open either.
@UncleEbeneezer: Nope, it was too early, wasn’t open yet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: Heh.
@opiejeanne: Look, we stole that water fair and square.
They still have a Schatz Bakery in Bishop, it’s quite popular.
@Geminid: Thanks much.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@stinger: Heh, both make for good shots!
@Jerzy Russian: Hmmm, a twin to the south.
@Betty: Thanks, it was good to finally stop and get some shots of these interesting roadside oddities.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JaneE: I was much too early for the tours, but the building is really interesting, so I stopped.
@dr. bloor: We don’t tell anybody about that.
@Benw: No sir, I have the greatest respect for the sky; day or night.
Albatrossity
Very nice! The eastern Sierras do offer some fascinating photo ops!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Albatrossity: They really do. I think I’ve shot some of my best landscape stuff in the Owens Valley, headed up there again on Saturday for a Milky Way shoot.
Origuy
I love the light in the mountain shots. I’m leaving for Tahoe tomorrow. Next week I’m staying in Bridgeport and touring the Mono Lake area. I don’t think I’ll make it as far south as Laws; I’m planning to go to Bodie.
Mike G
@opiejeanne:
You can go visit the diversion channel and gate where the aqueduct grabs its first water from the Owens River, it’s just off 395 near Independence. An interesting piece of Cal history.
Love the 395, so many interesting spots.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Origuy: Sounds like a good trip, hope the air quality holds up. We’re headed to the Alabama Hills Saturday night.
@Mike G: I know where the diversion is, but didn’t know that it was open to the public. I know in the days after the aqueduct opened, they bombed the Alabama Hills spillway.