Day 29 - A Long Day in the Saddle

Woke after a good night sleep to a lovely day in Lone Pine. As planned we got ready & popped next door for a McDonalds. I had a big breakfast & Jackie had a sausage McMuffin.

The Lone Pine McDonalds must be one of the most picturesque McDonalds anywhere in the world. After breakfast we wandered trying to get the perfect photo of the surrounding mountains.

At 10.00am sharp, we entered the Lone Pine Film History Museum & paid our $5 entry fee. At 10.05am we watched a 15 minute movie in their theatre that was all about the films 🎥 made in the Alabama Hills behind Lone Pine. Alabama Hills, I discovered were the brown lumpy things in front of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Literally thousands of Westerns had been made there, as well as more recent films such as Star Wars 5 & Iron Man.

The museum had loads of props, exhibits & photos from the making of all the well known westerns & the actors that starred in them. These include John Wayne, Gene Autry, William Boyd, Roy Rogers, Will Rogers & Randolph Scott to name just a few. Fascinating museum.

As we were leaving, I enquired if there was any of the old film sets were still in existence. The museum curator told us that all film companies were under an obligation to remove absolutely everything at the completion of filming. He did however give us a map to take us up to various film locations on & around Movie Road.

We drove just the 3 miles to Movie Road & drove a loop through a dramatic landscape & where it was easy to see why the western film makers chose this location for their films.

Conscious of the time, we left the wonderful Lone Pine & picked up California 136, then 190 into Death Valley. After passing Owens Lake, we climbed up & then down into a valley. We stopped for photos at an overlook of a canyon where now the ground was red & black sharp rocks.

‘But even in the freshest mountain air
The jet fighters practice overhead’.

As predicted by our biker buddy, Doug, American Air Force jets screamed across the Valley flying at low altitude.

We continued to Stovepipe Wells Village where we stopped to use the facilities & I ended up buying a baseball cap / T-shirt combo. I wore it for about 5 minutes before apparently it was more important they Jackie wore the hat to protect her scalp from the now scorching sun.

On we went & I alone got out & walked into the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes to admire the sand & dunes.

Next stop was Harmony Borax Works to see the remains of the original borax works. Borax is an important mineral & this product was sent by train to San Francisco. When we returned to the car, I decided to change out of my jeans into shorts. Had hardly seen a soul, but I somehow attracted an audience for this change.

We didn’t stop at Furnace Creek, then Golden Canyon was next & we went just part way though it before deciding we had seen enough. You need to pick & choose your Trails!

We then passed Devil’s Golf Course, before turning left for the Artist’s Drive. This was a tight, bendy, up & down one way road to Artists Palette, a multitude of natural colours on the face of the Black Mountains.

Our final stop in Death Valley was Badwater Basin, 200 sq miles of salt flats that are 282 feet below sea level. We had the standard photo with the altitude sign, then walked someway out onto the salt flats, just so we can say we had.

That was it, we now needed to get out of Death Valley & find somewhere to star for the evening. Time was ticking on & 6 ‘o’ clock was approaching. We drove & drove southwards on California 178 praying we were going the right way, because we had had no phone signal all day.

Eventually we arrived at a tiny little town called Shoshone that looked too small to accommodate us. My next plan was to make Pahrump, a casino town just over the State border in Nevada. We got there 30 mins later & parked up, did some googling & decided to try Saddle West Casino Hotel, which was at a bargain price.

It was perfectly satisfactory, so we checked-in, then on the receptionists recommendation, went to the ‘Pourhouse’ over the road. It was an Indian restaurant but did American food & was like a posh sports bar. The waitress obviously didn’t know us, because she asked, “Have you eaten curry before?” Have we? She then asked how hot we liked our curry between 3 & 10? She plumped for 8.

We ordered & shared a decent curry washed down with a couple of beers. We should have asked for aa 9 or 10!

On Jackie’s insistence we popped into the casino at our hotel, but unfortunately we didn’t really understand how to play, so after losing $3 we called it a night.

I may have a short memory, but could be my best day yet!

FITBIT = 12,754 steps / 5.92 miles.

Song of the Day - Whatever Happened To Randolph Scott by The Statler Brothers .

Bonus Song of the Day :-

225 by New Model Army
Into the Valley by The SkidsRead more