Tuesday, March 15, 2016 (Tuttle Creek Campground, Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, CA)

We woke to no wind this morning...yay! We had our usual start to the day and after our resistance exercises, showers and a bite to eat, we were ready to get on with our day. I had just finished in the shower when I received a text from Deb saying they plan on doing a shorter drive today to see the "Eye of Alabama" arch and a few others in that area...would we like to go? Absolutely! So we quickly got the dishes done and were all set to go at 10:15.

So begins another few hours of picture taking of this fabulous area. There are reportedly over 300 arches in the area. Ray and Deb purchased a small 29 page book by Orlyn Fordham called Arches of the Alabama Hills. It's a guide to 72 arches and 23 other features of the area, including GPS coordinates, 10 maps, and 71 colour photos. It has proved to be invaluable in finding the most popular arches. They picked it up at the Movie Museum in Lone Pine.

 Eye of Alabama Arch...

Above the arch...

Steve's running down the hill... (Ray's photo)

 Bikini Top Arch...

A lone boobie on top of Bikini Arch... :-)

Desert Dandelions...

 Stevenson Arch...

Exfoliated Rock...(picture courtesy of Ray)

Big Daddy Arch...

 After all our side trips off Movie Road, we continued on it...taking it all of the way to highway 395. We descended down onto the edge of the valley...and lots of vegetation.

Lots of different colours in the mountains east of Lone Pine......

We took highway 395 south back to Lone Pine and stopped at Lone Pine Smokehouse. We thought we'd go in, pre-order for dinner and then then pick it up later. Ray and Deb have been there for lunch and tried their ribs, which were excellent. Wanting to try their brisket, which isn't ready until after 5:00, we thought we'd give dinner a try. Unfortunately, they are closed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday...sheesh, guess we'll have to try another day!

So instead, we thought we'd try Jake's Saloon for lunch. It's a real cool looking spot but unfortunately, it is just that...a saloon with swinging doors, and does not serve food. Sheesh...again!

 So we walked a little further down the road to the Totem Cafe.

We all had delicious burgers...and waddled out deciding that we'd just had lunch and dinner!

On the way back to the car, Steve took a few more pictures. Another museum to visit perhaps...

Back home, Steve went down to the creek behind us and took a few pictures. Once he got back, I downloaded all of the pictures. Ray is big into photography so had changed a setting on Steve's camera so that he would be able to download "raw" pictures...he wanted to show Steve the "Light Room" program he uses to edit them. Well, I didn't know that they had done that, so I was starting to pull out my hair wondering why I couldn't get the pictures to download! Well, once Steve told me that, I just had to change a setting on Picasa and voila...there they were.

See the trout...

Most of the sites are quite large...

Ray and Deb's rig...

                                                                                                        (Ray's photo)

Shortly after 4:00, we joined Deb and Ray
around their campfire. No one was hungry after the massive lunch we had, so we sat out there chatting and having a few bevies until about 7:00 and then called it an evening. Another great day, exploring the area (with built in tour guides...sweet!) and the weather was perfect!

Our rig...