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Oregon Trail and Wedding Bells

… by way of California

By Time2Geaux Unplugged

September 11^th, 2020

“The most important thing in the world is family and love.” – John Woode

We got the call early June that our Son's wedding was on! We packed up and said goodbye to Arizona for this year and headed to Oregon. Rather than taking the traditional emigrant wagon trail across the plains we took US-395 up the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one of our favorite roads in the US. There is so much to see and do. We had traveled this same road in Season 1.

Our last trip down US-395 was before we added solar so we were restricted to location with hookups. This time we are looking forward to some great boondocking!

We plan to get to Oregon in time to help with any wedding task and pull out the Monday after.

Boondocking in the Alabama Hills

If you’ve never been to the Alabama Hills, you need to make an effort to go. I was first introduced to the area when a friend Joe Lewis and I bicycled across Death Valley to Lone Pine and then hiked up to Whitney Portal to climb Mt. Whitney. These hills, really granite (magma) incursion into a substrate that has since eroded away are famous for backdrops to many western movies and other movies since. You have likely seen the hills in car commercials. The town of Lone Pine have a western film museum and festival, a historic hotel where the like of John Wayne and Roy Rogers stayed during filming and everything you would expect from a frontier western town. With the proximity to Mt Whitney, the highest mountain in the lower 48 states, the town is a great launching point for climbers.

JoAnn and Jeff with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the background

Travelers in the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, CA

Boondocking on the Volcanic Tabletop

After leaving the Alabama Hills we pointed north to Bishop. JoAnn found some boondocking options and we went to check them out. The one we selected was Volcanic Tabletop, a plateau north of Bishop on BLM land. The faults running across the property were amazing, sometimes being 50+ foot vertical offset. While on one of the hiking trails, I discovered some petroglyphs carved on the volcanic rock’s desert varnish.

The location we chose looked great! We should have noticed the rock wall around the fire pit which was 3 foot tall. When the winds started blowing, they blew! Then the dust devils blew through from time to time. It was boondocking at its finest but we had a layer of dust inside the trailer that took weeks to eradicate!

Reading on the geology of the area, I learned that that a caldera much like the one at Yellowstone is in the area of Mona lake. This caldera is much older than the one at Yellowstone and no longer active but shaped the geology of this region of eastern California.

Bridgeport

We had been to Bridgeport before and enjoyed our stay at Willow Springs RV park. Not remembering the name, we drove to it and found that we could only stay three days since the weekend was booked. That was long enough and to see Bodie again and do some trout fishing. The park is a family owned park and David did a great job making us feel welcome. He had a campfire each night. While it was socially distanced it was nice to visit with the other part guest. I was able to get some trout tips and was able to catch two the following day. It was fun to work the creek and have dinner to show for the effort. While I didn’t do a very good job fileting them it was still nice to have those memories.

We visited the nearby ghost town, Bodie. It is always impressive to visit the most complete ghost town we have ever visited, maybe the best one in America. While it was at it’s prime during the late 1800’s and as gold mining played out most that left took only what they could take with them leaving everything else as it was. The town was a 40-hour stage coach ride from San Francisco. There is still dishes on the table of some houses and dry good in the window at the store. Once the town had a population over 5000 but most left due to harsh high desert conditions where winter could bring temperatures of -40 with gale force winds. The town was protected from scavengers by a local resident and was brought into the California State Part system in the 60’s and now has rangers who live onsite. Historical appropriate is done to maintain the integrity of the site. Due to the virus, we were not able to visit the stamp mill, the last mining effort to prove any commercial success. It is amazing to see where so many lived and died trying to scratch a living out of the ground. The many colors of broken glass that you see off the path is like the lives of those who called Bodie home.

Mammoth Lakes

We took a short detour off of US-395 to head up to Mammoth Lakes. Besides the fond memories of my first ski trip in 1979, Mammoth offered a summer version of a ski town. We did find some interesting sights but the prices for the RV park included all the amenities of a resort but were functioning at minimum due to their current virus protocol. I am sure the management didn’t mind making extra since they only had a third of their normal staff.

We had stopped by Mammoth Lakes with plans to visit the Devils Postpile.

Japanese Internment Camp

One of the most unexpected stops on our trek up US-395 was the Japanese Internment camp of Manzanar. The interpretative center was closed but the site was open for a driving tour. It is hard to understand the sacrifices made by these US Citizens who were forced to leave their homes and spend the rest of WWII in an internment camp, some working for the war effort sewing textiles. Another thing that makes me wonder is that the German Americans were not interned even with the individuals who started US versions of the Hitler Youth in America.

Cemetery marker at Manzanar (Roadside America)

Wedding Time

Our whole focus on repeating part of the route we had traveled in 2018 was to get to Oregon the safest way possible and since this route took us on the less populated side of California, on the Nevada border. We passed through Carson City and then headed straight to Southern Oregon. We parked the rig the in the same county campground we had stayed at before. Close to Cottage Grove, convenient and safe. Two of our children, Chelsea and Gabriel traveled from Louisiana and Texas and this was the first time in a long while that we had three of the four children together. Dylan was missed.

The wedding was in Rosenburg, south of Cottage Grove where our new daughter-in-law’s family was from. We made numerous trips to the wedding venue, helping with all aspects of the festivities. We are lucky, we have a caring family to help support our son who has moved from all his family to start a new life, much like the pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail over a century and a half ago. He was blessed not only to find a bride with strong family values but a new family with integrity and the same core values. We are so proud to call her family and welcome Kayleen and her family to ours.

JoAnn and Chelsea (Andrews sister) helping in the kitchen

Family time on the Coast

The day after the wedding Andrew and Kayleen had setup a day on the Oregon coast for immediate family to get to know each other in a less formal setting. The Oregon coast is world famous and we enjoyed the day and the company. We drove out to Cape Aragon where we all meet at one of the many state parks that Oregon set aside to keep the coast in the hands of the people for all to enjoy. We got to explore the beautiful gardens and ancient forest that was uncovered in a recent storm. The stumps of giant trees that were thousands of years old were interesting to see at low tide, knowing that this was once a forest that now is under sea water most of the day. Rising sea levels are nothing new, this forest grew when the sea level was 50 to 100 feet lower than it is today.

Gardens at Shore Acres SP, Cape Aragon, Oregon

Family time at Shore Acres SP, Cape Aragon, Oregon

Next Stop:

We are heading north to Washington. This is the last western state in the lower 48 that we have not visited with the camper. We both have great memories of Washington from several vacations and have been looking forward to getting back there.