Shortly after they left, we took off in the truck...first of all, we thought we'd check out more of the arches at the Gunga Din area. We parked in the lot near the marker (where Deb and Ray had taken us the other day) and I entered the coordinates for the arches into my GPS...then we headed off down the dirt road. We found Hell's Gate Arch...
After we were finished with that little adventure, we decided to drive into Lone Pine to the Film Museum...
It didn't take long after the invention of moving pictures for Hollywood to discover a spectacular location within a few hours' drive. The first feature film shot entirely on location at Lone Pine was "The Round-up", a 1920 silent Western starring Fatty Arbuckle in his first feature film. The director made good use of the incredible scenery near Lone Pine, with the weirdly eroded, jumbled rocks of the Alabama Hills backed by the snow capped Sierra Nevada.
The Alabama Hills appeared in over 300 movies in the 1920s-50s, mostly Westerns - although they also served as northern India, the Gobi Desert, various parts of Arabia, and even Africa in two Tarzan films.
The pace of movie-making slowed only slightly here as the Western genre became less wildly popular. Several stories featuring the distant past or sci-fi future have found a setting here, including Star Trek V and VII, Tremors, Gladiator, and Dinosaur.
After watching the documentary, it was time to take our tour through the museum.
Dentist Wagon - from the film Django Unchained...
Howdy Roy!
John Wayne's Coat from "The Shootist"...
The Twentieth Century Fox Stagecoach...
Wells Fargo Coach...
The Trail of San Antone Car; Buick Eight Roadmast 1941...(Steve's photo of the entire car was blurry)
The High Sierra Car; Plymouth Coupe 1937...
"Screecher" Animatronic Puppet No. 1 from Tremors 2, 1996...
3 "Graboids" Latex Puppets...
Exploding Head Graboid Puppet (1990)...
Iron Man Tony Stark as Classic Hero...
Gunga Din display....
On the way home, we decided to continue on Whitney Portal Road past our turnoff and take a look at Lone Pine Campground. It's very pretty back up there but the campground and sites are too small for us. It's also $20/night...no thanks, I'll stay with our BLM campground which is $5/night (or free if you have the LTVA permit!)
Back home, we had a bite to eat for lunch and then Steve filled our fresh water tank, by making a few trips to the water spigot to fill the 5 gallon containers. While he was doing that, I finished the blog and then relaxed...having another "go" at my new crochet pattern.
After dinner, we settled in for the night and as it was getting dark, the campground really started to fill up. There seemed to be a never ending string of headlights coming up the road into the campground...even about a dozen motorcycles. A busy Friday night around here!
Head light Friday ..tail light Sunday !!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the alone time again !!
You got that right...Sunday evening and it's back to normal now.
DeleteThe rocks and arches look really cool. Will have to add that to the list!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's a great area...I'd say one of our favorites!
DeleteInteresting information on the movies that were filmed there!
ReplyDeleteThe museum was really well done. I had no idea so many movies were filmed here.
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