Sometimes it is worth slowing down and taking the road less travelled for a scenic roadtrip.
Exploring the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains of California was high on my bucket list. In 2023, I enjoyed the fall colors of the Appalachian Mountains, and in 2024, my search for fall finery took me to the eastern Sierra. Come ride along with me on the iconic route U.S. 395.
Clicking on the images in this post will enlarge most for a better viewing experience.
In bygone days, before the advent of the U.S. Interstate Highway System instituted by President Dwight Eisenhower, cross-country travel was accomplished on a series of highways that connected cities and rural America by mostly two- and some four-lane roadways.
The most iconic of these was the “Mother Road”, Route 66, which traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles. It was popularized by a weekly TV show in which two young drifters, Martin Milner and George Maharis, travelled this route in a corvette searching for themselves. Many other such routes existed such as U.S. 20 which crossed the country east/west from Boston to Newport, Oregon (portions of this route I drive regularly); U.S. 50, the Lincoln Highway known as “the lonliest road”; and U.S. 101 which connected Canada and Mexico (and still does) along the Pacific Coast.
These routes were lined with character. I remember as a kid being driven up and down the eastern seaboard on U.S. 301 through many small rural towns on frequent journeys to visit our southern Florida family. There were no fast food restaurants (no, McD’s was not around!) To get a drink or maybe a hamburger, you stopped at Stuckey’s, a convenience store known for their pecan rolls and southern hospitality or ate meals at the “big chain” restaurant, Howard Johnson’s (before it morphed into a hotel chain). The economies of local communities along these routes were reliant on tourists stopping at their “mom and pop” restaurants, drive-up hamburger/ice cream stands, local gas stations, souvenir shops and family owned motels. While the advent of the interstates, such as I-95 which supplanted U.S. 301, provided us with expeditious travel and ease of migration, they also moved the main tourist traffic away from these communities. This curtailed the cash-flow that had sustained generations of families causing many thriving communities to more or less die. Today, there are still some places where you can get off the freeway, drive at a slower pace, and experience a bit of nostalgia. U.S. 395 is one of the longest of these routes still in existence. By driving this route, you can get a bit of the flavor of what travel in a bygone era was like.
A Little Background
In 1926, Route U.S. 395 was constructed connecting Spokane, Washington with the Canadian border.
In 1934, the highway was extended southward through Oregon, Nevada and California terminating at San Diego. This route was dubbed the “Three Flags Highway” because it linked Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. It rapidly became the primary route connecting southern California to western Nevada.
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 (aka National Interstate and Defense Highways Act) authorized funding for the building of 41,000 miles of standardized-construction freeways intended to make long-distance interstate travel within the United States more efficient. These new freeways frequently replaced older, often two-lane routes such as Route 66.
The southern most 150 miles of U.S. 395 was replaced by Interstate-15 which connects San Diego with the Canadian border at Sweet Grass, Montana. Today, U.S. 395 officially begins at Hesperia, California rather than the original San Diego. The Eastern Sierra Tour section of U.S. 395 (denoted on the map to the left) extends 395 miles from Hesperia to Carson City, Nevada. This is the section covered in this post.
Red Rock Canyon State Park
As you drive north from its southern terminus, U.S. 395 traverses the Mojave Desert. My first stop was California’s Red Rock Canyon State Park which consists of 27,000 acres at the intersection of the Sierra Nevada and El Paso Mountains.
The landscape is largely that of an otherworldly badlands resulting from sediment deposition, faulting, volcanic activity, and erosive processes.
About 10 million years ago, this area was a valley between the two mountain ranges containing a large lake into which sediments from the two ranges were deposited by rivers and floods.
As layers of sediment collected on the lake bottom, their weight caused compression of lower layers forming sandstone and mudstone rock.
Subsequent volcanic eruptions in the El Paso Mountains buried the sandstone under ash deposits and lava flows. Movement of tectonic plates caused faulting, and earthquakes along these faults uplifted the valley bottom exposing the soft sandstone and mudstone rocks underlying the harder volcanic caprock.
Over time, the effects of rain, wind and other erosional processes carved the softer rocks into the badland formations we see today.
The red color of some of the layers is due to the presence of iron which, when it oxidizes, forms iron oxide or rust.
The park’s desert ecosystem provides a habitat that supports a variety of wildlife species including eagles, roadrunners, hawks, coyotes, kit foxes, bobcat, a variety of lizards, rattlesnakes, desert tortoises, rabbits, mice, and a variety of birds, most of which are nocturnally active or hide in shaded crevices during the day. I didn’t see much wildlife during my visit.
The flora of the park is that which is typically found in western desert environments such as saltbushes, sages, and creosote.
The most notable plant is the Joshua Tree, the poster child of the Mojave Desert where it is endemic.
Although its name implies that it is a tree, the Joshua is actually a succulent capable of living in low precipitation environments that is a member of the Agave family. At maturity, Joshua trees attain a height of 20-70 feet. They are slow growing (averaging about 2-2.5 inches/year) and long-lived (up to several hundred year lifespans). As they age, they develop branches called arms. Arms do not typically begin to develop until the plant is 3-9 feet tall.
Although there are a number of official hiking trails in the park, you are welcome to explore anywhere you wish on foot.
I spent several hours wandering among the cliffs and canyons of the park. The cathedral-like formations shown to the left are called the White House Cliffs. They are truly impressive rising more than 300 feet above the canyon floor. When exploring the park, you need to remember that it is a desert environment with no shade. You should carry twice as much water as you think you will need and have sun protection.
This is a fee park with day use costing $6 per person ($5 for seniors).
Primitive camping is available in the rustic 50-site Ricardo Campground on a first come, first served basis. Potable water and pit toilets are available in the campground. Each campsite has a fire ring and picnic table. The maximum size of RV that can be accommodated is 30′. There are no hookups or shower facilities. Camping fees are $25/night ($23 for seniors). I camped for one night. It was quiet and very dark making it a perfect place for stargazing.
If you do not wish to camp, accommodations are available in the town of Mojave about 35 miles away. The park is about a two hour drive from either Los Angeles or Bakersfield.
Red Rock Canyon State Park is an amazing place to get away from the crowds and enjoy a badlands environment. I can’t wait to return!
Alabama Hills
The next destination on my itinerary was Lone Pine, California.
Returning to U.S. 395 from Red Rock Canyon and continuing northward, you leave the Mojave Desert and enter the Owens Valley with the Sierra Nevada to the west and the Inyo Mountains to the east. Before reaching Lone Pine, if you wish, you can detour to the east on Highway 190 to visit Death Valley National Park. I did not do that on this trip. You can see a post about one of my previous trips to Death Valley here.
The Owens Valley, through which the Owens River flows, is a 75-mile long valley whose floor averages an elevation of 3,700 feet. It is the westernmost basin of the Basin and Range Province. The valley was called Payahuunadü by the Paiute meaning “the land of flowing water.” The valley which lies in the rain shadow of the high Sierra and does not receive large amounts of rain was highly productive due to a Paiute system of irrigation ditches for capturing melted snow pack to add to the water supplied by the river.
A Little Regional History.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill granting the rights to the water from the Owens River to the City of Los Angeles. In 1907, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began building an aqueduct to transport the water more than 200 miles to the growing city. In 1913, water diversion began. It slowly drained Owens Lake at the southern end of the basin causing a dust pollution problem and made the valley more arid. When the Paiute protested the diversion of the water, they were declared an “Indian problem” and reservations at Bishop, Big Pine and Lone Pine were created with no water rights granted. In recent years, a reclamation project has helped restore the river and the the valley to a more native state. It should be noted that without the acquisition of water via aqueducts, Los Angeles area would not have been able to grow to the megalopolis it is today.
The boom town of Lone Pine was founded in 1861 after the discovery of silver and gold in the region. The town became the seat of Inyo County in 1872 as not only mining, but the fertile valley for agriculture made it the most prosperous town in the area. The diversion of the river’s water greatly hampered local agriculture and changed the economy of the region. In the 20th Century, Lone Pine became a mecca for the film industry and now serves as a jumping off point for outdoor enthusiasts who want to hike, climb and explore the eastern Sierra. Unlike many of the boom-or-bust mining towns, Lone Pine has survived because of the adaptability of its residents.
Photographing in the Alabama Hills east of Lone Pine has been on my list of things to do for many years so that was my #1 target activity for this roadtrip.
The Alabama Hills is designated as a National Scenic Area administered by the BLM between Lone Pine and Mt. Whitney. It contains some of the most unique rock formations to be found in the southwest.
Why in the world is something in central California named the Alabama Hills?
Its topography bears neither resemblance to anything in Alabama nor is it a series of rolling hills. It is a landscape covered by giant boulders with a view of the high Sierra.
The area was named in honor of the ship CSS Alabama by gold miners who were Confederate sympathizers. Before being sunk in 1864, the Alabama had become famous for its exploits of attacking and destroying Union merchant and naval vessels. The name Alabama Hills remains today although there has been a movement in recent years to rename the area as the origin of its name is viewed by some as racist.
Where did this interesting landscape come from?
About 220 million years ago, as the Farallon Plate (an ocean tectonic plate) moved eastward descending (subduction) beneath the North American plate (the plate on which our continent resides), it began to melt.
The resulting molten rock rose cooling slowly beneath the surface to form granite. Eventually, through a number of geological events, this granite ended up being uplifted to form the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
About 85 million years ago, volcanic activity deposited magma which also was transformed into granite in the area that became the Alabama Hills. With the stretching and ultimate drop that formed the basin, faulting occurred. It turns out that the granite of the Sierra is not much different compositionally from that of the Alabama Hills. The difference is in the type of erosive processes that formed what we see today.
In the Alabama Hills, the granite appears in the form of spherical, egg-shape, teardrop or even arch shapes in contrast to the very jagged peaks in the Sierra.
The granitic high peaks of the Sierra sport glacially carved ridges while the granite of the Alabama Hills has been shaped by the expansion and contraction of the desert floor which provided pathways for water to weather the rocks into unique shapes.
The Alabama Hills cover approximately 30,000 acres of public land with 18,745 of it designated as the National Scenic Area. Since it is administered by the BLM, there are no visitor facilities such as would be found at an NPS site – no paved roads, no visitor center, and no entrance or camping fees.
The best way to see the park is by a combination of driving the unpaved roads and walking amid the formations. While there are five designated trails ranging from 0.6 to 17 miles, you may walk anywhere you wish, on or off trail.
Some of the most interesting geological formations found within the Alabama Hills are the arches. There are 300 documented arches, and it is believed there are more yet to be discovered.
A number of these arches can be seen by hiking the Arch Trail. This is an easy, fairly flat 0.6-mile trail with only about 75 feet of elevation change. As just a hike, the trail can be completed in 15-20 minutes, however, there are many rock formations to explore so plan on a much more lengthy hiking time.
The most famous arch in the Alabama Hills, the Mobius Arch, is reached from the Arch Trail Loop. A short rock scramble from the trail allows you to reach the arch. The westward view through the arch frames Mt. Whitney which is the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states at 14,505 ft.
The striking rock formations and climate of the Alabama Hills have made the area a popular filming location since the 1920s. Over 400 movies, 100 TV episodes, and countless commercials have been shot here. The first feature film shot entirely in the Alabama Hills was the 1923 silent movie The Round Up.
While the majority of films were westerns (for example, How the West Was Won and Maverick), the Alabama Hills have provided a set for northern India (Gunga Din), the Gobi Desert, Arabia, Africa (two Tarzan movies), as well as the ancient past (Dinosaur) and sci fi locations (Star Trek V and VII). You can visit the filming sites of a number of movies by driving Movie Road and walking off the road using the Self Guided Movie Road Tour Brochure.
The Alabama Hills is a great place to wander among amazing geological formations, rock scramble, photograph, etc. If you are a movie buff, you can also visit the Museum of Western Film History in Lone Pine.
From Lone Pine, I headed west from the Alabama Hills driving 12 miles through a winding forested canyon on Whitney Portal Road which ends at the trailhead for climbing Mount Whitney. This is a great place for hiking and camping. I just drove the road for the views.
Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest
My next destination was the Bishop area. I got to experience some of that old time, pre-interstate vibe during this part of the trip. I spent one night in the 1960s-era Bristlecone Motel in Big Pine which reminded me of my family’s stays along U.S. 301. Bishop is an excellent home base for exploring this part of the Eastern Sierra with good places to eat and shop. It is reminiscent of the type of towns that thrived along the old U.S. highway routes, although an updated version. Spellbinder Books owned by my friend Lynne Almeida is a great place to browse and find books of local interest. I spent some time browsing there.
One must-stop place is the Erick Schat’s Bakkery, home of “The Original Sheepherder Bread”, where you can get all sorts of pastries, fabulous sandwiches (I bought sandwiches twice), and an unbelievable variety of freshly baked breads.
Sheepherder bread was introduced to the area during the California Gold Rush by Basque sheepherders. The bread loaves were shaped by hand and baked in stone ovens, a tradition that is still used to produce the loaves for sale in the store today.
Bishop is where I began my search for fall color by heading toward the Sierra and exploring along Bishop Creek. Below are some examples of the scenery I found.
My primary target for the Bishop area was a visit to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest Protection Area of the Inyo National Forest located in the White Mountains that form the eastern boundary of the Owens Valley.
This ancient sentinel, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, has been stunted and sculpted by thousands of years of exposure to barren soil, drought, wind, cold and ice in a place where almost no other plants can exist. Although this tree looks dead with most of its bark gone, the small amount of greenery you can see shows that it is indeed alive. This tree is living at about 10,300 feet of elevation in the Schulman Grove.
These trees are found only in cold, dry, windswept areas at high altitude in three extremely small, isolated mountain pockets of Nevada (Great Basin National Park), Utah (Bryce Canyon National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument) and eastern California (Inyo National Forest).
I have been fortunate enough to visit them in each of these places.
Bristlecones are able to attain great age (some of them 3,000 to 4,000 years old) not in spite of the harsh environments in which they live, but rather, unbelievably, because of them! Unlike most pines which replace their needles every 4-6 years, bristlecones conserve energy and replace their needles about every 40 years. Due to living in areas of little rainfall and very short growing season, these trees produce dense resinous wood that is resistant to attacks by mold, fungus and insects.
While most species of trees cannot survive major bark loss, bristlecones can lose 90% or more of their bark and survive as long as at least one narrow bark strip is available to connect live limbs with the nutrient gathering roots. It turns out that the oldest bristlecones live in soils that support almost no other vegetation. Bristlecones seem to prefer growing in dolomite soil which is white and rocky (what gives the White Mountains their name.) Dolomite is a type of limestone and is very alkaline. Most plants cannot survive in this alkaline soil. Bristlecones that live in more nutritious soils actually have much shorter lifespans!
To give you an idea of how slowly a bristlecone pine grows, this photo shows a seedling found near the Schulman Grove Visitor Center which sprouted in 2015 (so it was 9.5 years old!) For size comparison, the marker flag was less than a foot tall. You really need to click on this picture to be able to see the seedling.
This photo shows the needles and seed cone of the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree. I think the collection of needles looks like a bottle brush although that is not what gives the species its common name. The name comes from small, prickly bristles that form on the immature seed cones.
The drive to the Protection Area’s Schulman Grove Visitor Center takes a little over an hour when starting from Bishop. To get there, you drive south on U.S. 395 for 15 miles, turn east on State Route 168 for about 13 miles, and then head north on White Mountain Road for 10 miles.
Stopping at the Sierra View Overlook while driving on White Mountain Road gives you a spectacular view of the backbone of the Sierra Nevada Range in the distance across the Owens Valley. Although the route to the Protection Area after leaving U.S. 395 is sometimes steep and winding, it is paved and navigable by any car.
The bristlecone pines are concentrated into two areas within the national forest, the Schulman and Partriarch Groves. The Schulman Grove is at the end of the paved road, at an elevation of 10,000 feet and is the more developed of the two groves with a visitor center, vault restrooms and picnic area. There are three hiking trails considered moderate in difficulty within the grove that range in elevation from 10,075-10,350 feet.
The Discovery Trail loops through 3,000-4,000 year old trees for one mile with 280 feet of elevation gain. This is where the first bristlecone pine tree over 4,000 years old was discovered by Dr. Edmond Schulman – hence the name Discovery Trail in the Schulman Grove. There are interpretive signs along the trail that educate about the geologic conditions and ecology that allow these trees to thrive in this harsh environment. The photo at the beginning of this section was taken along the Discovery Trail at sunset.
The Methuselah Trail is a 4.5-mile loop with about 900 feet of elevation change. This is where you will walk among the oldest living trees on earth, the most ancient of which, Methuselah, has a verified age of almost 5,000-years old and is believed to be the oldest tree on the planet. You will not find a sign identifying this tree or any of the other very old trees for their own protection. It is too bad we need to protect them this way! For a longer hike, you can combine the Methuselah Trail with the 3.5-mile Bristlecone Cabin Trail which provides views of the historic miner’s cabins and mine entrances of what was the Mexican Mine. I didn’t have time to do this longer option.
To reach the Patriarch Grove, home to the world’s largest bristlecone, you continue 13 miles up the road from the Schulman Grove. Sounds easy, right? This drive took more than an hour of bone-jarring, dirt road travel in each direction. I suppose you could reach this grove in good weather in a passenger car, but I was glad to have my fairly high clearance, 4WD SUV. The National Forest Service suggests a speed limit of 15 mph on this road to avoid punctured tires caused by the sharp rocks. I really did worry about damaging a tire on one of the many sharp rocks sticking out of the road surface on this lonely road!
The Patriarch Grove is about 1,200 feet higher in elevation than the Schulman Grove. Here the trees are at the tree line above which vegetation does not exist. Wandering around this remote grove is like being in a sci-fi landscape, and you will likely be alone. I only saw one other pair of hikers during my visit to this grove.
There are two short trails to explore in the Patriarch Grove, the Timberland Ancients Trail and Cottonwood Basin Overlook. The Timberline Ancients trail is about 0.4 miles long which loops through the grove passing the Patriarch Tree. Since the grove resides in a large open bowl, this trail is fairly flat and easy. The Cottonwood Basin Overlook Trail is a half mile long and climbs to a vista point above Cottonwood Basin with an elevation change of about 110 feet.
The Patriarch Grove is remote with a dirt parking area, one pit toilet and little to no cell phone service. There are no other amenities and no water. Although the hiking trails are short and do not have a large amount of elevation change, remember that you are at an elevation of 11,300 feet. You should bring everything you need to be self-sufficient, including lots of water and sun protection (bristlecones provide little to no shade.)
Although it is possible to visit both groves in a single day, you would need to start early as the trip from Bishop to the Patriarch Grove is at least 1.5-2 hours each way. I chose to do the Schulman Grove in the late afternoon so I could experience the trees at sunset and returned to visit the Patriarch Grove early the following morning.
Visiting at least the Schulman Grove is a must-see if you are in the area.
Mono County
After returning to the Owens Valley, my next destination was Mammoth Lakes. This is an excellent home base for exploring the Mono County area with good places to eat, shop and recreate.
I enjoyed spectacular fall color on the 14-mile long June Lake Loop which traverses a horseshoe-shaped, glacier-carved canyon at the base of the 10,900-foot tall Carson Peak. Along the route, there are four lakes and the little town of June Lake.
The brilliant gold foliage comes primarily from Aspen trees.
Aspens are unique among plants – their stands are considered clones because often every tree in a grove is connected by a single root system making all the trees in the stand genetically identical.
Aspens propagate through underground roots with new trunks emerging from the roots. While aspen trunks may live for a century or more, the root system can be hundreds or even thousands of years old. In some cases, a single aspen clone may cover a hundred acres or more!
Along the route, there are quiet trails to hike, streams to fish and lakes to enjoy.
One of my favorite stops on this roadtrip was the lesser known Hot Creek Geological Site, a geothermally active area. Hot Creek runs through the bottom of a large volcanic basin which was formed by great eruptions about 700,000 years ago. Water from the Sierra filters downward via cracks in the Earth’s surface where it becomes heated by magma. This water returns to the surface via steam vents and hot springs at Hot Creek.
If you look carefully at the right side a little below the middle of the photo to the left, you can see the steam rising from a hot spring. The hot spring is closed to bathing because temperatures vary wildly sometimes increasing by hundreds of degrees with little warning. People have been seriously scalded here. I walked along the creek and discovered a number of fumeroles (steam vents) all accompanied with the sulfurous smell of hydrogen sulfide.
This was a very fun place to explore.
I wanted to go to Devils Postpile National Monument and Rainbow Falls, but Reds Meadow Road which provides access to the area was closed for reconstruction. It is possible that road closures will continue in 2025. Closure information can be obtained here.
Driving north from Mammoth Lakes, you reach the little town of Lee Vining. Here you can turn east on Route 120 to visit Yosemite National Park via the Tioga Pass Entrance. I have explored the Tioga Pass region of Yosemite a number of times so I did not do that on this trip. You can easily add the national park to a U.S. 395 tour itinerary. You should check here to see whether timed entry passes will be required at the time of your trip if you want to visit Yosemite.
Just outside Lee Vining is Mono Lake, an ancient, more than 1 million year old, lake possessing no outlet for its water. Over its lifetime, salts and minerals have washed into the lake from the Eastern Sierra, and evaporation of water has concentrated these salts and minerals generating a lake that is now highly alkaline and about 2.5 times more saline than an ocean. The interaction of freshwater springs with this alkaline lake water has caused the precipitation of calcium carbonate to form structures called tufa towers.
The California State Park System has preserved this area as Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve. This reserve is not only home to the tufas, but also serves as a wetlands habitat for 1-2 million migratory birds each year.
The South Tufa Trail is an easy one mile loop that allows you to explore the tufas. The best time to view the tufas is at either sunrise or sunset.
My last stop on this roadtrip was to the ghost town of Bodie, a former gold rush town.
You can read a blog post about my visit to Bodie here.
If you would like to take a trip where you can see spectacular scenery while learning a little geology, ecology and history, and experiencing some mid-century nostalgia, I highly recommend driving U.S. 395 between Hesperia, CA and Carson City, NV or any portion of the route.
Although much of this route can be done in any season, some of the higher altitude areas might be difficult to access in winter. I definitely recommend the autumn if you want to go leaf peeping. Since I was doing this trip as part of travel from one obligation to another, I only had five days to spend touring. To do the entire trip justice, I would suggest planning on a week or more of travel especially if adding a visit to either Yosemite or Death Valley. Note that Tioga Pass into Yosemite is typically closed from November through late May/June due to snow while Death Valley is not a place you probably want to visit late spring through early fall due to extreme heat.
Thank you for sharing.
You are very welcome Cindy. This is not all that far from where you live.
Thank you for including all of the pictures and information about the Joshua trees, the bristlecone pines, and the aspens. As I was scrolling, Don said he wondered if there were any bristlecone seedlings there, and sure enough, you included one!
Thanks for sharing!
You are most welcome. I hope you and Don were able to enjoy seeing plants that do not live anywhere but out west.